If you've regained a fraction of your telepathy, why don't you just force the guard to stand down? Scott projected the thought directly into Emma Frost's mind as he lay paralyzed on the concrete.
I cannot, Scott, Emma's cool, crystal-clear voice echoed back. The Torch isn't human. He possesses no brain, no biological architecture, and absolutely no soul. I can track his processing inputs, but I cannot read him. He is a synthetic android.
Scott stared at the flaming silhouette of the original Human Torch, stunned.
Before he could process the tactical nightmare of an un-hackable android, a crackle of pure, white ozone shattered the silence.
Peter had no idea what had just happened in the psychic plane. He didn't know Mister Sinister had just been spiritually impaled by a multidimensional spider-deity. He only knew the pale psychopath standing in front of him had suddenly gone entirely slack-jawed, staring blankly into space.
Peter didn't hesitate. He dropped his optical camouflage, channeled a massive surge of bio-electricity into his right fist, and swung.
The punch carried the kinetic force of a freight train. Peter's crackling knuckles slammed squarely into Essex's Victorian, aristocratic face. Bone shattered. Teeth flew across the asphalt like shrapnel. The sheer concussive impact launched Sinister into a violent, triple-spin through the air before he crashed face-first into the pavement.
Essex groaned, his jaw hanging at a grotesque angle. He stared up at the teenager, his mind racing to calculate the catastrophic failure of his genetic loadout.
The Leech suppression field was completely useless; the boy wasn't a mutant. Jean Grey's telepathic sequence had failed spectacularly. Sabretooth's healing factor was actively struggling to repair the horrific cellular burns caused by the bio-electricity. Even Omega Red's death spores were having zero effect on the kid's hyper-metabolism.
Essex bared his bloody teeth and reached out with his telekinesis, fully intending to crush the boy into a sphere of meat.
But Spider-Man was gone. He had vanished entirely.
Essex scrambled to his feet. He threw his hands up, using his telekinesis to rip three massive steel plates out of the dock to form a barricade. Then, he opened his mouth and exhaled a thick, billowing cloud of crimson Omega spores. The red mist washed over the docks. A few yards away, the mist parted around an invisible, human-shaped void.
Essex smirked. He had his target.
He thrust his hands forward. A massive, ten-ton shipping container ripped off the ground and hurled toward the invisible silhouette. Simultaneously, Essex telekinetically plucked a sphere of hyper-thermal plasma directly off the hovering Human Torch, launching the fireball to cut off Peter's flank.
A week ago, Peter would have panicked. He would have desperately back-flipped away, relying entirely on his agility to survive the pincer attack.
Today, Peter planted his boots.
He raised both wrists and fired. Two thick, continuous streams of webbing shot out. Peter instantly channeled his bio-electricity through the synthetic silk. The lines ignited into blinding, high-voltage plasma whips.
Peter swung his arms. The electrified webbing cleanly sliced the ten-ton shipping container in half mid-air. The two massive steel halves crashed harmlessly on either side of him. Without breaking his rhythm, Peter snapped his wrist, lashing the plasma whip forward. The webbing wrapped tightly around Essex's throat.
Peter dumped his maximum voltage down the line.
Essex shrieked as thousands of volts of electricity surged through his nervous system.
Suddenly, Peter's spider-sense drove a white-hot spike into the base of his skull.
Peter dropped the web-lines, pivoted on his heel, and threw a desperate, full-force hook behind him.
A cloud of indigo smoke popped. Essex had teleported directly into Peter's blind spot. He materialized just in time to catch Peter's fist.
Spider-Man's arm punched cleanly through Mister Sinister's sternum.
Blood and shattered bone sprayed across the asphalt. Peter froze, his eyes wide under his mask, his arm buried up to the elbow inside the geneticist's chest cavity.
"Oh, gross!" Peter yelled, violently yanking his arm back. He aggressively shook his hand, trying to fling the blood off his glove while fighting down a wave of sheer nausea. "Sorry! I remembered you had a healing factor, so I put a little too much juice into that one!"
Essex collapsed to his knees, staring down at the gaping hole in his chest. He was choking on his own blood, but he was still alive. His tissue was already desperately trying to knit itself back together. He looked up at the Human Torch, mentally transmitting a frantic command.
The flaming android's eyes flared. He began to ascend, preparing to dive-bomb the teenager.
Now, Scott! Emma's voice snapped in Cyclops's mind.
The psychic block vanished. Scott's eyes snapped open. A devastating, ruby-red spatial rift erupted from his pupils, a continuous beam of pure kinetic force that slammed directly into the Human Torch.
The android absorbed the beam, fighting the pressure. But then, it abruptly stopped. The Torch looked up at the sky, turned, and shot off into the clouds at Mach speed, as if obeying a completely different, overriding command.
Essex watched his only extraction method vanish over the horizon. He slumped onto his back, defeated.
Peter stepped over him, raising a glowing, crackling fist, ready to end the threat permanently.
"Don't do that, Spider-Man," Scott called out, sitting up and pulling his spare ruby-quartz goggles over his eyes.
Peter paused, glancing over his shoulder. "Are you serious? If I remember my Avengers briefings correctly, this guy is a psychopathic scientist who tortures people in test tubes. Didn't you guys already kill him once?"
"You misunderstand me," Scott said, pulling himself up to his feet. His voice was entirely devoid of mercy. "I mean hand him over to Emma. If you just kill his body, his consciousness will simply upload to a secure server. We need her to lock his mind down and shred it permanently. We end this today."
Peter blinked. He nodded slowly, lowering his fist, and took a step back.
Emma walked over, her white coat pristine despite the warzone. She pressed two fingers to her temple, her eyes flashing solid white.
Essex looked up at her. A weak, bloody smile stretched across his shattered face. He closed his eyes.
A few moments later, Emma dropped her hand. Her expression was grim.
"We've been played," Emma stated flatly. "He anticipated a psychic trap. This vessel is empty. It's nothing but a biological drone, operated via remote telepathic relay."
Scott sighed, running a hand through his hair. He looked over at the pile of unconscious Weapon X mercenaries. "Well. At least we didn't leave empty-handed." He turned toward the bunker entrance. "Hank. We need to completely destroy that gene-editing mainframe. We cannot let S.H.I.E.L.D. get their hands on Essex's data."
Halfway across the world, deep inside a black-site facility in Malaysia.
Nathaniel Essex gasped, his eyes snapping open. He was back inside the heavily muscled, bald body of "Ajax."
He ripped the neural-relay helmet off his head and threw it across the room. The intrusion of the spider had ruined everything. He had been forced to sever the connection to avoid Emma Frost's psychic snare.
Essex pulled up his primary terminal. The signal to the Madripoor gene-editing device was dead. The X-Men had destroyed it. The vast archive of genetic data he had accumulated was gone. To combat the inevitable awakening of Apocalypse, he needed that data. Now, the only remaining operational mainframe on the planet was locked inside the heavily fortified mutant nation of Genosha.
Just the thought of trying to infiltrate Magneto's stronghold gave Essex a migraine.
He stood up, abandoning the command center, and marched down the sterile white hallway into the primary cloning laboratory.
A blonde female scientist in a lab coat looked up from her microscope as he entered.
"Dr. Kinney," Essex said coldly. "What was the operational designation for the contingency cloning program?"
Dr. Sarah Kinney straightened her posture. "X-23, sir. Why?"
"We failed to capture James Howlett," Essex said, staring at the rows of empty incubation pods. "Activate the backup plan."
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