"Damascus"

BY JACOB MILNESTEIN

She fell upon the frail aspect of his body, tears of sweat running down her face and falling between her breasts as she moved to a rhythm purely of her own design, cradling him in the palm of her hands as he reached up, his fingers dancing around the sweet flesh of her privates and slowly pushing his way inside of her.

His eyes flickered beneath the veil of his eyelids, an inconsistent symphony of rapid eye movement.

Her mouth opened, lips reciting silent prayers of gratitude that would ultimately fall upon the deaf ears of a God that no longer listened.

Together, they twisted in delicate beauty, the rain tapping out its melody upon the windowpane - a gentle soundtrack to the consummate act of love that blossomed between them.

And then the light fell - shattered glass flames illuminating their movements and shining light into the dark corners of the squalid room.

Kitty Pryde twisted, turning to face the window and the blinding heart of the light.

Her mouth became slack and her concentration left her as she returned to her natural state and phased out of physical existence, falling through her lover as she did.

Wisdom let out a short protest; his privates suddenly standing upright in the cold Kitty-shaped air until the menagerie at the window also snared his attention.

A frail figure composed of withering flames, a sickly expression across its masque-like face, hung on the winter's edge that was the dominion of the outside world.

It opened its mouth to say something - a warning perhaps, Kitty asked herself, yet before she had time to answer the 'being' had fallen through the plane of glass that separated the two of them from the outside and spilled out onto the unfurling floor at the edge of their bed, flames spreading from its own ravaged body and licking the textile surface of the carpet.

Still intangible, Kitty leapt to her feet and nearly fell through the floor.

The being crawled across the floor, an inch at a time, its entire body shaking with agony and terror.

It looked up, dull yellow eye sockets filled with flame and suddenly she knew exactly who it was.

"Johnny." She whispered, drawing in sharp, rapid breaths.

The flames flickered and then slowly, an unseen force quenched them, revealed the shape and form of an aging man, hair once sandy blonde now faded to dull monochrome grey.

Jonathan Storm, also known as the Human Torch and formerly of the Fantastic Four, lay crippled on the floor of their squalid London accommodations, his face littered with deep, month-old scar tissue and a thin layer of mucus and congealing blood already cultivating across every inch of skin on his body.

He looked up, his eyes clouding with emotion and his fist outstretched and curled around an unforeseen object.

"They'll be here soon..." He whispered, looking straight through Kitty, his eyes finally alighting on the dull far wall of the flat. "It doesn't matter now...I got what they wanted...and...and..." He looked up, this time staring directly at her. "I saw the face of Baal, God help me...I saw its face...It was looking down at me...as if I were nothing more than a fly...and then..." He shook his head from side to side, his voice breaking in the agony of his confession. "It killed Sue...tore her head from her shoulders, turned her inside out...but it never got what it wanted..."

She exchanged a worried glance with her lover and the Human Torch's fist unfurled, revealing a blood-soaked scrap of parchment.

He looked up a final time.

"Don't let...Baal...get...the Apocrypha." He whispered and then quietly, Jonathan Storm laid his bleeding head to rest of the carpet, breathing a staccato finale and then letting his lungs empty of air.

A final tear fell from his eye and then he went silent, his spirit now away on the Crow Road and his body finally motionless.

Wisdom's face took on an expression of deadly seriousness.

Without a word, he rose and turned his back on the body, facing the battered antique wardrobe that rested alongside the far wall of the bedroom.

"Do you want me to get your uniform?" He asked, his voice devoid of any trace of emotion.

She looked from Jonathan Storm's motionless body to her lover, his image pale and gaunt in the reflection of the mirror, and silently she felt herself torn once again between duty and love.

An all-consuming silence emptied the room, leaving her anonymous before the pre-dawn winter light.

Finally her dry lips offered a single word, shattering the silence like ice.

She looked at Wisdom's hurt expression and confessed.

"Yes." She whispered.

X

He opened his eyes, his vision blackened by the agony of his recent transmogrification at the hands of the hideous Anti-God, the being known as Baal.

The world above him was black, full of circling vultures - translucent shadows of ill configured daemonic sadists.

There were voices in a language he thought that he might once have understood.

'Your old men shall dream dreams and your young men shall see visions...'

The vultures encircled, drawing ever closer to his body as it lay in ruination and then he faded once again.

Somewhere there was the distant cry of another life but he chose to ignore it.

It was all buried now, a distant past that had long since been laid to rest and now there was nothing, an abyss for distant and complex emotions.

It was quiet now and finally Brian Braddock understood...

X

The smell was the worst thing.

Rising up, the tainted whispers of decay - testament to the Gospel of Baal.

She had no idea why Pete had wanted to return here.

She guessed it was something to do with nostalgia but even after more than sixteen years together he was still as difficult to read as he had been when he had first arrived on Muir.

They had been here since before the 'invasion' had begun six months ago.

It was almost as if he had known that it was going to happen.

She shook her head from side to side.

There were some things that she just didn't want to know about, some truths far too brutal yet still she resented not having been told.

The Hillman Imp turned violently, the wheels going up the kerb.

Still, she didn't suppose it mattered, especially seeing as London had been cracked open, leaving the brutally butchered corpses of its children sprawled out beneath its icons and filling the streets with all the filth and pain that had been accumulating over the centuries since its founding.

With her eyes remaining on the road and her right hand staying on the steering wheel she attempted to straighten her old Doom Patrol uniform, a more reliable variation of her original Excalibur one.

When Excalibur had disbanded in nineteen ninety-six in a flurry of mutual distrust, she had returned to America, taking Pete Wisdom with her.

Pete had hated it.

After a month or two, the humidity, piss-water lager and neverending desert roads had begun to get him and when the Doom Patrol had gone on a recruitment drive after a particularly nasty episode with Black Air, he had jumped at the chance and she had been quick to follow.

Ahead, the dark shape of the UNIT building rose up, consuming the road before it and eclipsing the dawning sun.

She brought the car to a halt and stepped out, straightening her uniform in a vague attempt to at least provide an air of authority.

Briefly her mind drifted back to Wisdom and for a moment she allowed he worries to surface.

She shook her head as if this simple motion would shake the weight from her shoulders and then carefully followed the steps at the foot of the building, slowly pushing the large transparent double doors open and ushered herself inside.

X

Cainer, perched on the edge of a monitor array, squinted down at the varicose flesh that composed the broken man's aspect as Churchill pulled back the layers of material that had been burnt into the man's skin, with nothing but a pair of far from hygienic tweezers.

"'Ere, I know that bloke." Cainer finally exclaimed. "Used to be a superhero or somethin' didn't 'e? Captain Britain or something lame like that."

Churchill remained focused on the almost-cadaver of Brian Braddock.

"Yes," He muttered. "Captain Britain, formerly known as one Doctor Brian Braddock and also known as Britannic." He smiled wryly. "Yes, I do believe with a legacy of pseudonyms such as that, one would have few alternatives but to integrate oneself into metahuman society."

Cainer flash the body a disapproving glance.

"That's still no excuse for grown men in spandex." He muttered.

X

"You're a bleeding stupid sod, you know that, Pete?" Romany smiled, nursing the half glass of vodka and orange before her.

He shrugged.

"Yeah, well, ain't got nothing better to do, have I?"

He smiled whimsically, a veiled effort to conceal the fact that inside he was hurting...hurting like fuck.

"You can't fool me, Pete." Romany chided. "I know what you're like. Christ knows, I should after all this fucking time."

He nodded numbly.

"It's just...Just, I didn't think she'd be so fucking into this shite. Not with all that's happened before." He paused and looked up at her, meaningfully. "I mean, Christ, she's lost those bastards so many times before that I've fucking lost count, you know what I mean?"

Romany glared into the depths of her orange-tainted, cheap Russian vodka.

"Just because you have experience, doesn't make it all suddenly stop hurting when you go through it again. Fuck's sake, Pete, it's not as like she's bloody made of stone, is it now?"

He smiled limply.

"I'd be pretty fucking buggered if she were." He remarked.

His hand ran through his receeding mop of jet-black hair.

"How old are you now, Pete, thirty something?" She inquired.

"Thirty-eight." He muttered with a scowl.

"Exactly. She's what...ten, nine years younger than you? You can't expect her to suddenly want to move to sodding Kent and have twelve kids."

Wisdom's smirk grew by a foot and a half.

"Be more of a fucking challenge, that would, by Christ."

She smiled.

"You going through your male menopause then, are you?" She asked.

"Am I bollocks." Wisdom replied, scratching his forehead in what she had learned to interpret as an open display of insecurity. "I don't know, Romy, its not as though she's an X-lass anymore, is it? Fuck, she's not even bloody Doom Patrol at the sodding moment."

Romany nodded with her traditional understanding, if not cynical, fashion.

"Why aren't you telling this to that Scouse bastard friend of yours? The one who always looks likes he's been pissed on from a great height."

Wisdom gave her a dismissive look.

"John's got his own problems." He muttered. "Last thing the poor sod needs is me goin' on like a fucking school girl."

He finally finished off his pint, leaving the glass standing empty and forlorn in the centre of the bar.

"There's no one else then?" She asked.

He turned to look at her, his eyes shadowed by lack of sleep and his expression almost as forlorn as the empty pint glass.

"Yeah," He muttered, rising up and straightening his jacket. "I'm just not looking forwards to seeing her again."

She smiled, reaching out and touching his hand.

"Hey, it'll be alright." She smiled, her face brimming over with false optimism.

Her brother shrugged, tossing a cigarette into his mouth.

"Yeah," He said, sarcastically. "Will it bollocks."

Romany offered him a final smile and then he was gone, back out into the heart of darkness.

X

Kitty Pryde stood, a little uncomfortably, before him, the ancient piece of parchment delivered to her by the late Human Torch, held tight within the grasp of her right hand.

"Well, Miss Pryde," The Brigadier muttered. "It appears you have something for us. I am of course aware of you through your connections with our late lamented sister branch, the Weird Happenings Organisation."

There was something about him that she instinctively did not like, something about him that made the hairs on the back of her neck rise up and stand to attention.

She often wondered if it would be beneficial to have such a gift as the late Peter Parker's 'Spider-Sense' - something that would confirm her gut reaction.

In fact, right now, Kitty Pryde would have settled for a big robot that muttered "Danger, Will Robinson, Danger!" every now and again let alone Parker's 'Spider- Sense'.

Her mind began to drift once again and she remembered the last time she had seen Parker - nearly two years ago and a short time before the seeds of Baal's plan had been sown.

That had been a confusing time, knowing that this was Rachel Summers' native time and meeting her for what she would come to think of as 'the first time' had really emphasised the meaning of the word 'paradox' for both her and the other former members of Excalibur.

The group had officially disbanded in nineteen ninety six and their reunion two years ago had been short lived, ending with the death of Kurt Wagner and the truth of Brian Braddock's brutal rape and abuse of the elemental child, Meggan Fey, being exposed.

That had been the final blow, the realisation that time did not heal, it just made things easier to cover up.

She sighed, bringing herself back to the present day.

Calohan glared at her, his eyes cold as steel and his expression showing nothing but contempt and impatience.

She smiled weakly.

"Yeah," She muttered, handing over the piece of alien parchment to the cold, disapproving military man. "Johnny Storm gave me this..." She whispered. "Shortly before he died."

Calohan snatched it from her hand, holding the parchment up to the light and glaring at the hieroglyphics scrawled across its rough surface.

"Yes," He whispered, beneath his breath. "This is exactly as the Old Ones predicted."

Pryde shuffled nervously from foot to foot.

"Johnny mentioned something about an 'Apocrypha' or something...before he died." She said nervously.

Calohan's sickening smile broadening, his lips unfurling to reveal two unequal rows of bile stained yellow teeth.

"Thank you, Miss. Pryde. Your assistance has been invaluable, I'm sure that we should be able to deal with things from here on in."

He continued to smile as she stood, prostrate, before him, her mouth open in shock.

She tried to find the words to express herself but she found her mouth dry and wordless.

Calohan's expression changed, his face suddenly contorting in mock surprise.

"Oh, I'm sorry, Miss. Pryde, do you really believe that we would even entertain the notion of taking a civilian onboard?"

"Well...well...WHO always..." Kitty stammered.

The Brigadier's evil smile returned.

"WHO don't exist anymore, Miss. Pryde, as well you know." His lips curled viscously as the words spilt forth from the pit of his hatred. "Your friends at Black Air saw to that. Now, if you won't mind removing yourself, you are no longer required."

He clicked his fingers and two UNIT soldiers stood to attention then moved menacingly towards her.

Instinctively she allowed herself to become intangible.

"No, it's okay," She snapped. "I'll see myself out."

The Brigadier smiled once more and offered her a sarcastic smile as her now intangible form dropped through the floor and towards the ground level.

He waited until he was sure she had gone and then turned, his hand stretching out and picking up the battered Victorian telephone.

His fingers dialled a series of digits and he then waited for an off realm call, his foot tapping anxiously against the harsh, carpet-less floor.

The line connected.

"Greetings, Mister Calohan," The voice on the other line purred. "How goes the good fight?"

"I've uncovered the Egyptian's note, we should have the Apocrypha within the next twenty four hours."

There was a momentary silence, time delay he assumed.

"This is fortunate news," The voice smiled. "I look forward to hearing from you in twelve hours time."

The line went dead.

X

He hammered his fist against the battered frame of the mass of seething wood lice and pulp that served as a door and waited, his expression becoming increasingly agitated.

Since the arrival of Baal, the streets had become a labyrinthine of anarchy; the streets paved with not only good intentions but also the actual people who had first conceived of those self-same intentions.

American news networks had began to call it the Post-Aztec era; something to do with some Aztec Fifth Sun bollocks, he couldn't quite remember what.

He had first heard about Doomshield six months ago.

An old Black Air informant, Christian someone-or-other had tipped him off, claiming that once Wisdom received the information they would be even.

Since that first half-transcript of Churchill's statement of intents, Wisdom had been in touch.

He had known the psychiatric patient they had liberated and subsequently employed as the Angel Core of the project and he had kept tabs on the resistance movement that had been preparing itself for the coming of Baal.

And despite his best efforts to keep Kitty out of it, some bastard Yank had still managed to get her involved.

He punched the door once more, pushing his fist through the soggy collage of shit that spread itself over the entrance.

"Oi," He shouted down the decayed corridor. "Any of you evil little bastards at home or what?"

His voice rang out in the echoing hallways and he allowed his cigarette to fall, grinding it into the sea of refuge with the heel of his shoe.

"Come on, you bastards, don't make me do the secret agent shit."

The sound of movement echoed out from behind him and he turned, his fingers flaring up at the threat of danger and producing ten of his lethal hot knives.

A dishevelled woman stood before him, her hair twisted into huge dreads that hung down her back and her top lip, nose and right eyebrow all gleaming with silver piercings.

"Wisdom, you old bastard," The figure smiled. "I was wondering when you'd catch up."

He smiled uncomfortably.

"Yeah," He replied, allowing his hot knives to dissipate. "It needed to be done."

X

Cainer dropped his scalpel and jumped back several feet, the sound of fallen metal echoing throughout the dank corridors of the old cathedrals.

"Jesus Christ," He exclaimed, pointing an accusing finger in its direction. "The bastard's still alive!"

Churchill tilted his glasses and hoped it accentuated his air of professionalism.

"Then may I suggest you stop poking him with that knife." He offered in his own near monotonous tone.

Cainer glared at him.

"But you said..."

Churchill smiled reassuringly and placed a hand on the younger man's shoulder.

"I was unaware, Mister Braddock was still breathing. Of course now that we know he is, that changes things somewhat slightly."

Rob Cainer looked decidedly uncomfortable, turning his cigarette round in hand and arranging his empty cans of lager into neat little toy soldier rows.

"Well, isn't there someone we should call? Someone we should tell about this?"

Churchill scowled.

"And tell them what? That we were just about to dissect our former Captain Britain as he's been used as Baal's puppet for God knows how long?"

Cainer offered up an apologetic sigh, accompanied by a concerned shrug.

Churchill looked down at the struggling cadaver; its limbs suddenly active once more as Sandra examined the patient, pushing away the cold tray of cutting devices.

"Severe brain damage may have occurred," She muttered. "If we don't get him to a doctor soon, he won't make it."

There was a meaningful silence, soon broken by the sound of approaching footsteps.

"Let the bastard die." It announced as the visitors stepped forth into the light.

Churchill's lips curled upright in a smile.

"Miss. Firth, how very good to see you again." He purred.

Konstantinova gave a short nod, her attention almost entirely focused upon the Braddock-cadaver.

"Yeah, yeah, it's all fucking top, isn't it?" She muttered. "Those crazy bastard Eco Troopers are back, you here that? Still, don't think it'll matter much to Baal." She paused, finally looking up towards her elder. "How is Doomshield anyhows?"

"Like a dead baby at the bottom of a swimming pool." Cainer snorted, exchanging looks and reprimands with Churchill.

She nodded as if she had known this all along and then presented her companion.

"Folks, this is Pete Wisdom; Pete Wisdom, meet the Doomshield lads and lasses. Me Mam knew old Churchill over there during the Dalek invasion in the twenty second century."

Cainer gave her a confused look.

"But it's still only the twenty first century." He exclaimed. "Besides, what the fuck is a Dalek?"

"Yeah, time's a bastard, ain't it. I take it Doctor Churchill hasn't told you everything about himself then?" She smirked.

Churchill placed his arm on his comrade's shoulders and adopted a parental tone of voice.

"A Dalek, Mister Cainer is..."

"...A big tin beastie that kills you." Konstantinova finished.

Cainer's bewilderment remained.

"That's doesn't help much."

She smiled reassuringly.

"Don't worry, you won't live to see them." She replied in an unnaturally dark voice. "Anyway, I've sussed out Baal's next strike and now we've got two former Excalibur team-mates playing for our side we should be able to get some good shots in before London is rendered completely sterile."

Wisdom coughed and tossed her umpteenth cigarette down towards the ground.

"What about Kitty?" He asked, his voice unusually worried.

"We'll pick her up on our way out." Konstantinova announced as she picked up a dried up old book and placed within the confines of her Teletubbies shoulder bag.

" 'Way out where' exactly?" Cainer asked.

"Egypt." She replied. "I have no doubts that my grandfather will be waiting for us but it's vital we acquire the Apocrypha before Baal or any other bastard does."

Cainer throw his arms up in despair.

"We can't just leave here." He exclaimed. "What about Miki, what about the fucking Doomshield project?"

Konstantinova leant in closer towards him.

"Listen you whinging little dickhead, no one is asking you to tag along, alright?" She snarled as he shrunk back a step or two.

On the top of the monitor array, an old seventies police siren suddenly burst into life, dowsing the room with epileptic showers of blue light and a sound akin to nails being scrapped along a black board.

It exploded in an inferno of twisted wires and melting metals and then the wall imploded, sending a short, brunette middle-aged woman in an ill fitting navy blue uniform spiralling down several floors before she finally impacted on the floor besides them.

"Jesus Christ," Wisdom shouted, his voice submerged in outrage. "That's Kitty. Some bastard's shooting at my bird."

Thick intangible knives of fire infinitely hotter than the heart of a super nova splayed forth from his fingertips and pounded against the chest panels of a being emerging from beyond the curtain of the shadow.

Taking this as a cue to act, the Doomshield security Men-In-Black also opened fire, shearing hot bolts of plasma dancing like rain around the shadow being.

They didn't even begin to touch it.

With a hideous single movement it lumbered out into the dim light of shattered brick and stained glass windows, its eight crab-like claws scraping against the potholed ground as it moved.

"Jesus fuck, what is it?" Cainer screamed, his own weapon falling to his feet as hysteria claimed what little rationality he was accredited to possessing.

Konstantinova looked it directly into its eight reflective eyes, making sure Pete had enough time to get in and pull his fallen girlfriend out before the creature noticed.

"We are fucked." She whispered. "We are so fucked."

The monstrosity shivered in anticipating, its three mouths chattering explosively.

"See how I come from you?" It snarled in its own guttural imitation of speech. "See how I am reaching out from before my creation to the place where you stand now." Its entire body quivered with pleasure as it procrastinated, holding back its climax. "The Old One, Baal has cracked open your time stream like a nut shell and now, with the Time Lords' corridor, we are here, time immemorial, awake before the longing of the soul and the polluting of our nest world."

"You can't be serious." Konstantinova whispered. "I knew it was getting bad out there, but I never knew it was that bad."

The creature tilted its head.

"The Hive never lie, my pretty." Its jaws smirked in unison. "And now prepare for the delicious feast of perversion that I shall lay before you, garnished by your sin and flesh and of course, blood."

It was then that Konstantinova saw him.

An old man in a wheelchair, he must have been eighty or older, the wheels clanking along against the shattered road way, nearly tossing him from his seat as he approached, closer and closer, towards the Hive beast.

She wanted to shout out to him, tell him to get the fuck away but her mouth had gone dry, all words frozen upon her tongue.

He caught her eye, his wrinkled old flesh rippling in a smile and he doffed his bowler hat in greeting and acknowledgement of her terror.

The Hive still hadn't noticed.

Finally, his wheelchair ground to a halt behind the creature causing sparks to fly up from the shattered stones below.

The beast, turned its concentration shattered for a brief moment and the old man raised his umbrella, pointing it almost directly into the creature's face.

Konstantinova, her mouth open in awe, watched as the umbrella unfurled outwards, reconstructing itself into a new and bizarre configuration, thick trenches of metal ingrained on either side of its now bulky form.

It was a fusion cannon, she realised.

He pulled the trigger and a tremendous ejaculation of pure energy burst forth, blasting the creature's head back thousands of years into the hideous depths of the future that had spawned it.

Its body crippled under the shock, shivered once, a twitching of its paws, and then collapsed against the ground.

Each of them looked towards him in complete surprise and the ancient stranger just smiled, a childlike beam scrawled across his face.

With a withered hand he reached up and tilted his bowler in their direction.

"Greetings," He announced, his voice old and dry yet still vibrant. "I'm Steed - John Steed."

Kitty looked from her lover to the rest of the group, a look of sheer confusion and startled amazement spreading across her features and then, uncontrollably, she began to laugh...

X

The future had become brutally apparent, dreams of future warped and distorted by a sickening mutilation of the current time stream.

She had watched as the world in which she grew had unfolded at the seams, watched as Kurt Wagner and his mother, Mystique had been murdered in the most debauched, cold-blooded fashion, watched as every single bone in Jubilee's body had been snapped out of place and pushed upwards through the veil of her skin, watched as the swarmtroopers had crushed America underfoot, scratching it from history like so much useless waste.

And now the future had blossomed.

When Baal had burnt his image across the skies over London, then history had changed, taking a twist which none of them had expected.

Baal had decimated the entire Sentinel program and promptly handed it over to Black Air. It hadn't changed anything.

You could replace cold machinery with brimstone burnt flesh and the manifesto would still unfold in the same course.

The techno-organic animated corpse that had once been Douglock had been grafted into the heart of Black Air, the architectural nightmare known as the Blackwall and now everything had been lost.

Unless...

Two years ago, a woman known as Konstantinova had appeared.

Shane had recognised her instantly, simply by the way she dressed, as being a Black Air insider but all the same, she had listened to what the woman had said.

A single sentence that would change her life from that point onwards, return purpose to the insanity that her life had descended into.

A simple strain of words that reconfigured her life:

"Kill Piotr and you will save the future."

And in that instant, Tangerine had understood everything...