INTERLUDE
An indeterminate number of years ago...

She AWOKE to searing pain, pain in every cell of her body, in her very bones, licking through her like cold fire. She tried to scream and then realized that she'd actually been screaming for some time -- her throat was so sore that she could only let out a strangled rasp. She tried to struggle free only to find that her wrists and neck and ankles were already scraped raw under unforgiving metal restraints.

She would have wondered how long she'd been fighting the agony...except that she had no language or concept of time in which to express herself. So she simply subsided, panting like a trapped animal, grateful merely that the pain was ebbing into an aching soreness all over her body. Her head was pounding, both with pain and the sudden influx of...thoughts? Every effort to figure out what was happening to and around her felt unfamiliar, sharp-edged -- like something entirely new.

She could hear gutteral sounds at the edge of her hearing, and she tensed all over. Only the gangly, ugly Fall People made sounds like that-- "Fall People"? Where had she gotten that term? That wasn't what they were called...

She realized with a cold start that she was, indeed, thinking. In sounds just like the ones she was hearing. What was going on? What had they DONE to her?!

Now that she concentrated (which sent a fresh wake of pain ricocheting between her temples) she found to her dumb astonishment that she could understand the grunting, hissing noises. They were TALKING. She listened, lagging a word or two behind as her newfound power of cognition struggled mightily to match words to meaning. And succeeded.

"...should be a success," the one voice was saying. "And, more to the point, she's from the same genetic pool as Equilibrius, so there shouldn't be much adjustment necessary for you and the others."

"But...a she?" This was a deep, heavy voice. As the writhing light faded away from around her she chanced a peek from under her eyelids and almost gasped at the size of the man. And...he had four arms! An abomination!

"Bah. Male, female -- it's hard to tell with those dirty little primates. At least she's still breathing after the process, unlike the last two you brought in. Good enough for me. You'll survive, Barbarus." The first voice was brittle and querulous, the voice of a man who disdained speaking to his inferiors...yet one who saw no being as his equal. "Unfortunately, I'll have to thoroughly study the readings on this particular case and recalibrate the entire system before attempting to upgrade another Mutate into our ranks... Gaza?"

Someone else was already moving into the room, heading straight for the upright table she was strapped to. Another giant. She closed her eyes tightly, playing possum, but not before she noticed his eyes were pure white; his head did not track in response to his surroundings. Blind. She swallowed hard, unnerved by that glimpse of empty stare. What kind of place was this, that allowed monsters and the crippled to live...?

A cool hand brushed across her brow. "She seems unharmed, and sentient. Probably awake, too." This voice was right above her head, deep and unhurried and perhaps a little sad, but she could sense a smile in his last sentence. The straps loosened--

With a defiant howl she propelled herself off of the cold metal, scratching and clawing. She caught a tantalizing glimpse of an open door not four meters away before the blind giant effortlessly pinned her arms to her sides and set her feet not ungently on the stone floor.

"That's not going to work on a psi, child. And don't worry, you're not the first one to feel that way about Brainchild's genetic transformer," he said softly. To her dismay, he was still holding her arms clamped down. Discarding the new bank of language which had been forced into her head, she merely snarled eloquently in reply. She could feel him chuckle against her half-bare back.

The unpleasant voice -- she glanced up and now saw that it was attached to a bearded, weak-limbed little man with a repulsively swollen head -- called out, "She's your responsibility for now, Gaza. See that she learns the ropes, but don't give her the run of the Savage Land yet, you understand? And find her something to wear before Lupo catches sight of her."

But what's wrong with what I--? For the first time she glanced down at her body...and nearly choked in horror. The rough fur tunic which had always fit her strong, barrel-like body now hung limply over the stretched frame of a pale, spindly, hairless...thing. Her knees were grotesquely bowed inward -- by the Stones, they were actually TOUCHING each other! And to view them at all, she had to lean slightly forward to see over breasts the size of a nursing mother's.

Frozen with shock, she glanced sideways into a vague reflection on the metal table from which she'd just been released. Wide sky-blue eyes, eyes which meant blindness to the Swamp People to whom she'd been born, stared back at her out of a narrow white face supported only by a frighteningly fragile-looking neck. The entire apparition was topped off by a high, flat forehead and surrounded by a ragged froth of silver-green hair.

Even the tall, mohawked Fall People didn't look THIS horrible.

W-what have they DONE to me...?

Even as she realized that she could never go home to her people, she found to her sick dismay that she no longer had a clear concept of "home"...or of "her people." Primal thoughts and memories which had dwelt comfortably in a small brain with a large hindbrain were vanishing like morning mist into the chasms of a much larger mind which was organized in neatly labelled "words" and "facts" rather than in wordless "feelings" and "concepts."

She barely noticed as the blind Gaza coaxed her into walking -- rather, wobbling dangerously on stiff-kneed legs as she fought to come to terms with her new elevated center of gravity -- and led her from Brainchild's high-domed laboratory.

END INTERLUDE

Vertigo was having that nightmare again: of the table and the light, of the rapid wrenching restructuring of bone and muscle and the hideous indescribable beyond-pain sensation of the expansion of her very skull itself...

This time, she knew that it was no dream but, rather, an actual memory.

This time, she fought it.

You're not really happening! You're over, you're done, you're gone! You happened a long time ago and I--will--not--RELIVE--YOU!!!

The pain broke like water over a surfacing swimmer's head. She gasped, flailing for consciousness, as other images kaleidoscoped past--

-- the lessons in teamwork and obedience drilled into her by the other Savage Land Mutates, the endless watch for a godlike magnetic creator who never returned --

-- her first real battle, her first taste of power and triumph, and then her first defeat against Ka-Zar and that spider-guy and the mutants she would later know as the X-Men --

-- a blank murky period of reversion to her original primitive state, followed inevitably by the agonizing return to "human" form as her genetic programming restabilized --

-- her first sight of Sinister, as he offered his gloved hand and the world in exchange for her service in his new team of assassins --

-- the night she'd finally overheard the month-old news that the Savage Land had been destroyed, the night she'd spent curled up in a lonely bunk weeping at the memory of waterfalls and jungle sunsets --

Grimly, Vertigo shoved past the crowding memories, forcing them back down. A shred of consciousness fluttered past and she grabbed onto it for dear life, pulling herself hand over hand back into the real world.

She was first aware of cold concrete against her back. Then, as she reflexively struggled to sit up, the pain rippled down her back and over one hip and flared white-hot from the back of her head. She cried out and clutched her throbbing skull as the world spun and rocked around her.

When reality once more settled out into a queasy solidity around her, she became aware of a steadying hand on her shoulder. Her stomach spasmodically clenched into a hard knot as she looked up, tensed for a fight.

Her first impression was relief. The woman was obviously not one of the Marauders. Judging by her nondescript jeans and the battered brown bomber jacket, she was no police officer either -- although for a moment Vertigo glimpsed the blue-steel butt of a most expensive revolver glinting under the woman's arm.

Her second impression, as clear cobalt-blue eyes met clear cobalt-blue eyes, was that she was looking into a mirror.

She jerked back, shaking the hand off of her arm. All she seemed to be able to manage was a feeble, stupid "W-what -- who...?"

The other woman sat back on her heels, politely keeping both of her hands palm-up and in plain sight. On second impression the differences were more apparent: her rescuer (?) looked slightly older, with a keen clear wary look around her eyes that Vertigo was more accustomed to seeing on Arclight's features. The woman's own green-and-silver hair was cut to a short haphazard pageboy; most of it was stuffed under a black woolen cap but for a few errant locks and a spray of bangs.

"What do YOU think?" she said with a wry smile. "You tell me."

Vertigo was unable to stop staring, though she knew that she must look like a fool. Her aching bruises (what happened to me?) could be shoved behind her curiosity for the moment. "I'd say that you're me. Or--" it dawned "--you're another me. A clone. Did Sinister...no, he didn't, did he? You're not his."

"Very good. No, I'm not, though I once was, just like you. I WAS you." Vertigo felt a bit better when she noticed that her more blase "twin" was obviously striving mightily to keep from staring right back at her. "Now isn't the time, but just between you and me I am going to want to know everything that happened after I...left."

Vertigo blinked and tried to avoid asking the obvious. To her relief, the woman sighed and added, "All right, the Cliff Notes version, okay? I was the 'you' they lost in the Mutant Massacre."

"The what?"

"Oh yeah, that's right, how would you know...? That's what the government called our...your strike on the Morlock tunnels way back in the Eighties."

It was starting to make sense. "Oh. The time I died...the first time, anyway."

"What? Oh, I see, that's how it would seem to you, wouldn't it? Yes, that's exactly it. But I, you, whatever -- I didn't die. They caught me." Her expression was studiously blank. "I've been in...custody, ever since. Looks like Sinister just wrote me off and kept going, huh?"

As she listened, Vertigo carefully leaned back against the storefront, hissing between her teeth as the ripple of bruises down her back shifted. Under the other's words she was silently appraising her condition, preparing for the inevitable trouble. Doesn't seem like anything's broken -- I've taken worse in sparring matches with the guys. Get it together, girl, get it under control...

"Why are you telling me this? Did you escape--?" The look in her other self's eyes told it all. "No. You didn't. But you're here...so you're working for them, aren't you. The government."

A flat statement, not a question. The woman didn't bother to even consider lying. She merely nodded, once.

"Uh...huh. So you didn't rescue me out of the goodness of your heart, did you? I--owwww, dammit, what happened, anyway? There was a, a noise..."

"You were hit by a taxi. Actually, the way you went running out into the street, I'd say that YOU hit IT. Didn't anyone ever teach you how to cross a street?" She continued without pause, changing topics without giving Vertigo a chance to protest angrily. "Yeah, you're right again. The people I work for...they'd like for you to work for them too. Two assassins are better than one, you know -- and they can train you pretty quickly, too, considering that they got all of that trial-and-error stuff out of the way with me." There was a trace of bitterness at that, smoothly hidden a moment later.

However, Vertigo caught it. She scowled as even as she wriggled in a rather undignified manner, trying to ease the pressure on her sore tailbone. "Sorry, but in case you hadn't noticed, I'm getting out of the assassin business. 'Sides, I'm no good solo."

"That's what you think. If they could teach me, they can teach you. You haven't even touched the true extent of your power, did you know that? 'Vertigo' my ass!" Her "sister" tapped the side of her own head knowingly. "What you -- what WE do is more than that, as if it hasn't been obvious all these years! Whether you understand it or not, to mess up the inner ear like we do involves screwing around with nerve signals, body electricity, that sort of thing. Complicated scientific stuff. All you and I need to know is that with some effort and some focus, we can cause a stroke...trigger a seizure...stop a heart."

She smiled again, this time a cold humorless smile. "Why else do you think they're willing to hide us away from Carlton's taskforce, to keep us out of the hands of the law? Why do you think they call me Misfire?"

Vertigo was fascinated despite herself, eyes wide and her tumbling thoughts hanging on to every word. Is this true? Could *I* do THAT?! Her heart leapt with hope. If I could do that I could stop the rest of the Marauders in their tracks, single-handed. I could escape for good.

But work for the GOVERNMENT...?! I don't think I like this...

And who the hell's 'Carlton'?

Misfire was watching her face carefully, as if reading the war between belief and doubt. "Hey, don't worry about it too much. The decision's already been made for you."

"Oh has it," Vertigo said flatly. That clinches it. I DO NOT like this.

Her doppleganger was checking her watch, careful to keep one eye on her prisoner -- for that, Vertigo now understood, was exactly what she was despite the lack of handcuffs. "Back-up's a little late, but you really have no choice in the matter. The street is still swarming with cops--" as if on cue, a police car cruised by at that very moment with its lights silently flashing "--and if your life hasn't changed drastically from when I was living it, I'll bet that your former teammates are hot on your trail even as we speak."

Her voice softened a bit. "Really, it's not so bad. It's not like going to prison; they ask a lot of stupid questions but the food is great and the training facilities are something else. You'll finally have real control over your powers -- over your LIFE. Isn't that what you want? You ran away, didn't you?"

The last line hit Vertigo sidelong, surprising her. She nodded before she could stop herself.

Something odd flickered in Misfire's eyes for just a moment. "They've asked me why I didn't do that. Run away from Sinister, I mean. Leave the Marauders," she explained very quietly. "I told them that I didn't want to, I was too young, too dependent. That even if I had wanted to leave, I was incapable of trying something like that...that I was too weak-willed and obedient to even think of such a thing. In an odd way, it's kinda nice to know that eventually I would have...grown up...and figured it out on my own."

It's now or never, Vertigo thought tersely as a momentarily deep-in-thought Misfire pushed off her wool cap and raked a hand through her freed hair. Ignoring the stiffening soreness all down her body and the fleeting thought that this woman could kill her with a thought, the Marauder rolled forward and rammed into her captor, bowling her over onto her back.

Vertigo had no intention of letting the woman get a good grip on her -- or focus her attention to scramble her nerves with her (their?) power! When Misfire caught her arm and lunged up, obviously aiming to flip her over and pin her down, Vertigo snarled and slapped her in the face with a flare of her power. Her supremely confident doppleganger had obviously not expected her weaker counterpart to attempt something so simple -- caught totally off-guard, Misfire let go and crashed flat back onto the pavement, disoriented and retching.

A brief, fleeting advantage; the desperate Marauder pounced upon it, blindly grabbing for whatever she could steal from the assassin and then single-mindedly clawing to her feet by way of the rough brick storefront. Her fingertips were scraped raw in an instant, but an instant was all she needed. One knee snapped into Misfire's chin on the way up -- then her leg came back down, searching for purchase. She stamped down without hesitation, her bare foot planting itself viciously hard in the woman's solar plexus, finishing the job that her flash of mutation-induced nausea had began. Then her other foot hit pavement and she was away!

Misfire rolled over onto her knees, hunched over double with her arms wrapped around her ribs, gasping for breath as darkness surged around the fringes of her vision. Her training was screaming at her to get up, to DO something, but the bitch had nearly cracked her ribs with that last...kick? No, she'd actually STOMPED on her!

...aw bleeding christ...how humiliating...

Sternly, Misfire ordered her panicking body to relax, forced the tight muscles to unknot. By the time she could suck a decent amount of air in over the protests of her abused diaphragm and the dizziness cleared, her captive was nowhere in sight.

And neither, still, was her back-up.

Perhaps the area's cordoned off, she thought grimly, maybe Carlton's people have finally wised up to the game and headed them off...or maybe they're just too chicken-shit to get in here to give me a hand. DAMMIT! I don't believe this! They were probably still expecting me to lug her back to the rendezvous point... That had been the FIRST plan, before she'd specifically requested for them to come meet up with HER when she'd made contact. It would have been so simple -- just play friendly, coax the new Vertigo into the van before she caught on...

And they call ME the loose cannon.

She reached for her belt only to find that her cellphone was gone. Swearing like a sailor under her breath, Misfire staggered to her feet and stared down the street, first one way and then the other. Nothing. Not that she'd expected anything. She mused for a moment and then set off in the direction that felt "right" to her. She was, after all, tracking herself.

She had nothing against her other self, really. She would have done the same in the girl's place -- probably worse. But if she ever wanted to walk the streets as a free mutant again...

The government really had nothing on Misfire's previous life as "Vertigo" to convict her of any crimes: no photos, no fingerprints, no witnesses, not even any solid evidence that she'd ever belonged to the Marauders. In fact, they barely had any proof that the Marauders even existed, other than circumstantial telltales and the word of a few "heroes" who were deemed outlaws themselves more often than not. Only with the recent formation of the new X-Factor -- more specifically, the inclusion of Polaris, a former Marauder herself -- had anyone been able to identify her positively at all.

However, even with Lorna Dane's vengefully detailed report now on official record, nobody had ANY proof that "Vertigo" had ever harmed anybody at all. In a way it was true, as she'd never actually killed another living being with her own hands. Or, before the Program had shown her how to "upgrade" her powers and coerced her into serving as their own pet assassin, with her own so-called genetic gifts.

None of that mattered. From the moment that Special Agent John Carlton's taskforce brought her in from the Morlock Tunnels and been promptly forced to relinquish her into government custody, the law no longer applied. She'd vanished through a loophole; "right down the black-ops rabbit-hole, Alice m'dear," as her favorite training coach had once joked, "straight into Spook Wonderland." She no longer existed.

Not that I ever really did to begin with.

It wasn't a bad life, really. She didn't regret anything she'd done. However, now that she'd had a taste of what lay beyond the Savage Land and the all-consuming "teamwork" of the Marauders, she wanted more.

And as long as she was the only "Vertigo" in the Program, they'd never let her go...

Driven by sheer adrenaline, Vertigo didn't stop running until she was a good two blocks away. By a miracle no one on the now sparsely populated street looked in her direction; the image inducer still crookedly tagged to her dirty sweater was functioning, but at the speed she was moving its vain flickering efforts to camouflage her were worse than no cover at all. She wasn't really aware of that part of her situation anyhow. Only when she stopped to pant for air, doubled over and cursing the racking pain which was now overriding her surge of survival-driven energy, did she finally notice the small device. Fearing some trick of Misfire's, she hastily yanked it off.

Next to her, something moved. She jumped and whirled, only to find that the movement had been nothing more than her reflection in a restaurant window as it...reappeared?

She cautiously clipped the inducer to her sweater once more, braced for anything, ready to hurl the little chunk of hard plastic away at the slightest sign of foul play. In the window, her image winked out. Delighted, she flapped her hand in front of the glass; she could almost see something, then. A jerky blur of waving arm. She thought for a moment and then tried the same motion again, only far more slowly.

Nothing. No sign that she even existed.

Despite the situation, despite the fact that the Marauders, that Misfire woman, someone named "Carlton," and half of the Baltimore PD were out gunning for her hide, a grin spread slowly but surely across her dirt-smudged face.

Between whatever that thing is and what that Misfire creature said about what I can do with my powers... Still wearing that blissful smile of satisfaction, she examined the OTHER two pieces of equipment she'd managed to snatch from Misfire's jacket in passing. With a small pleased sound, she possessively stuffed the more interesting of the two devices into her waistband, under her sweater's trailing edge. Not to mention THIS little ace in the hole...yes, things are finally looking up, I think.

The second item she'd grabbed didn't seem as useful -- what the hell was she supposed to do with a high-tech cellphone? -- but hell, when you were in as deep a pit as she was, you didn't look a gift horse in the mouth. With a shrug, she folded it up and jammed it into a pocket.

Bravado expended, Vertigo finally allowed herself to sag forehead-first against the storefront. After a moment's thought, she then tried to contort herself in such a way that she could touch-examine her aching back and her scraped butt. Failing, she instead put her weight on her right leg and gingerly probed her outer left thigh. Damn thing felt like one giant bruise, and her knee had that shaky feeling it always did after it was narrowly avoided being dislocated -- must be where the taxi hit me, she surmised. She wasn't sure if she WANTED to touch the back of her head yet. At least she wasn't seeing double. Her clothes were a complete ruin, though.

She winced with embarrassment as she touched her aching ribs, right where that goddamn clumsy businessman had hit her with his briefcase in the crowd. Scalphunter would laugh his ass off if he could see me now...

Right after he blew my head off, anyway.

She bit her lip. Okay. Focus, woman. First things first, then. Can I walk? Yeah, I'd better -- this is all going to be a real bitch when I stiffen up. Keep moving, get as far out of this area as I can, then hole up somewhere to rest...find some clean water...something to wear...and something to eat.

I wonder if pizza places around here deliver this late at night...?

Vertigo wasn't usually much for foresight, but thanks to the countless batterings she'd taken in practice sessions at the hands of her teammates she was absolutely right this time about how she'd feel the next day. When she woke up the next morning, curled up on her side in a nest of discarded cloth and cardboard on the embankment under an overpass, she was so stiff and sore that she couldn't uncurl or sit up. Her back screamed if she even thought about trying to roll over, her thigh felt terrible, and her knee was completely useless.

She groaned in utter misery and buried her head under a tattered blanket -- then moaned again as the movement awoke a whole new throbbing in the hot, tight lump on the back of her skull. OooOOOooooo...god, at this point, I almost wish the guys WOULD show up to put me out of my misery, she thought hazily, glad that she'd had enough brains to fill up a discarded bottle with tap water before crawling into this new bolthole. She clutched the heavy plastic bottle against the pit of her stomach and tried to go back to sleep amid the rumble of traffic on the concrete overhead.

It was going to be a long few days.

NEXT: T'ain't looking good at all for our so-called heroine, is it? Well, *I* wanted to plunge right ahead with the story, but sigh let's face it, after what I put her through she's going to HURT too much to move for a bit. Hey, like Misfire noted, I let her off easy enough as it is! Will one of Vertigo's myriad enemies catch up to her while she's helpless, or will she survive to run again? You'll see. Is this story actually going somewhere? You bet it is.