Excalibur by David Wheatley

"He knows," he said as he watched from the sidelines as Wisdom killed the being that claimed to be his daughter. "I wonder how he found out?"

It did not matter, though - he had been given a task by Necrom and in exchange for his help Necrom would ensure he survived what was happening, and work as one of Necrom's authoritors. It was an interesting touch that one of the former Knights of Pendragon was now working against the forces he had worked with, however this was not about power, or control.

It was about revenge, revenge on Wisdom. The man had done him wrong time and time again, and this time there would be an end to it, away from the politics, away from the prying gaze of their superiors.

It just meant he would have to take matters in to his own hands…

Wisdom looked down at the body of the young girl he had just killed and her shape was being restored. Illyana had been a space phantom, and Pete figured they were in Limbo. The rest of the team were probably being put through their own versions of hell or whatever but it would be interesting to see if they too managed to see through the illusion. Of all of them, he suspected that Drake would, because he was too canny not to see a mistake. The real question was going to be how this had happened - how had Necrom gotten to them so easily, and how did he know so much about what was going on? It all came back to Kate and the period that she'd disappeared before Ahab had captured them.

"I hate this job," he muttered as he walked down the slight incline to the cars. Maverick was waiting, talking to Kitty who was in the car with Lydia sat beside her. Nobody had seen anything, or if they had they weren't reacting. That would work for him, because he knew there was only going to be one way out of this, because it seemed that this place was as large as a city, and everyone here were space phantom's then escaping wouldn't be as easy as he'd have liked. That was why he had a plan.

"Hey Mav!" Pete called as he got close to the car, and gestured. Maverick came over and Pete put his arm around his shoulder. "I just wanted to say…" Then he snapped the man's neck. "Sorry." He knew what he'd just started as the other started to round on him and he cracked his knuckles, as they all shouted at him in shock and horror at what he'd just done and he fired a couple of hot knives in to the cars which exploded throwing the people to the floor. He stood there, hot knives at the ready and he knew he had their attention now.

"You lot are not my friends, not the people I know. In fact I've no real reason not to kill you all." He looked across at Joseph Chapman. "And I'll enjoy killing you most of all."

If Pete had continued looking at him after he'd spoken, then he'd have seen the slow smile spread across Chapman's lips.

"Network? What's that?" asked Adam Drake to the man standing there before him.

"It's the organisation set up by Michael Carrington," said his dying future self. "McVey is the head of security. He's going to get you back to the other members of the team to fight Necrom."

"This is bizarre, you both know that," said Adam, looking from one to the other. "It doesn't feel… right, you know?"

"I know," said Adam. "Just remember this - the time you have counts. Tell Rachel the things you want to say." He gave a cough and he nodded. "Trust me." Then his head lolled to the side and Adam felt a shiver as he realised he may have just witnessed his own death.

"I know what you're feeling," said McVey. "Witnessing your own death isn't pleasant. That's why I'm here. I have a second chance to live again, to alter the way things went."

"You died?" said Adam.

"In battle with the Dawn. Their high command is going to put siege to Stark/Fujikawa Island."

"S/F Island? But it's nothing to do with Carrington…" He saw the look on McVey's face. "Oh he wouldn't. He didn't."

"He did. Took it back for Network. Been there ten years now."

"That sounds like a Carrington stunt," Drake said with a sigh. It was something that Michael would do - a grandstanding effort that would make an impact on everyone. There was an air of truth to McVey's words but there was also something about him he couldn't put his finger on. McVey might have been telling the truth, but Drake didn' trust him in the slightest. "Ok, McVey, you sold me. So what now?"

"We go after the others." McVey smiled and energy wings appeared and Drake was impressed. "I've some temporal energy stored in my wings to get me… us to Limbo."

Drake nodded. "Then let's go." He looked back at the body and promised that this was not the way his future would turn out. No matter what he had said, he would make sure of it.

Adam Destine watched as his son, his dead son, stalked him like a predator and he knew that Vincent was toying with him, knowing full well that he was incapable of striking him down for a second time. Destine shivered at the memories of that day, how his family had been divided by what to do, some pleading with him to find a better way, but they had all tried to find one. He'd had no choice - Vincent had been unable to harm him and the two of them had wrestled and fought, Adam eventually grasping his son's throat and squeezing the life from him.

"Yes," said Vincent, knowing his father was remembering the past. "You remember what you did to me. The bruises have faded, but I the scars go deeper than that."

"Adam," Newton said as he came running up. "The readings are…" He stopped as he saw his brother. "Vincent?"

"Hello, Newton," Vincent replied. "Goodbye, Newton…" He waved his hand and before Destine could realise it, Newton was gone, nothing remained but a pile of ashes. "Life and death. So simple," Vincent replied as Adam lunged at him and then he dodged, letting Adam fall to the floor. "You have no idea how simple it all is." He slammed his foot down on to the back of Adam's head pushing him down in to the floor. "I know you don't need to breathe, Father, but it does not matter." Adam pushed up, as if he were doing a push-up and threw Vincent back.

"I'll kill you again," he said, looking at the place where Newton remained, swearing revenge and wondering what kind of damage had been done to the timeline. "Believe that I will."

"Believe that you can't," said Vincent and the two men grappled with each other, one fighting for life, the other fighting for death and Adam slowly began to realise he didn't know how he could kill Vincent, but Vincent's mad glare said he knew how to kill him. Who knew what kind of secrets he had learnt beyond the grave?

"NO!" Elisabeth said, pushing back on Pale Flower's ghostly form. "I don't love you. I couldn't love you. Not the way you want." Shirohana's ghostly form looked on her, the eyes of the shade and it was then she saw it, something in the form of the girl, the person she had called friend, that told her the truth. "I understand," she said and marshalled her powers, sending a psionic blast across the immediate area, dispelling the illusion.

The space phantoms were struck with the telekinetic and telepathic fury of a woman violated and the walls around her crumbled, revealing a desolate wasteland of a place. This could only be Limbo and of the illusion only Shirohana remained.

"Shiro," she said, shaking as she came to terms with what had just happened to her, and she swallowed it back inside her. "Is it really you?" Shirohana's eyes tried to say something as they had before but a voice echoed around.

"Foolish creature," the voice said and Elisabeth turned to see a disembodied head floating there. The greenish hue of it's skin, the bald pate, the sheer evil within the presence that hung there - it could only be Necrom. "You have doomed yourself to an eternity of torment!" Shirohana's shade screamed as she was held in an invisible grasp, twisted, stretched and torn. The psionic torrent that flooded forth struck Elisabeth, who had been open after her own attack and dropped the young Englishwoman to her knees and then it was over.

Shirohana was gone as was Necrom. Elisabeth tried to control herself, to calm her breathing and relax her mind, using the techniques she had learnt during the demise of the Hellfire Club. The death cries of those she had known had been almost too much for her, but Pete had seen her through. It had taken time, but she had used the pain and death to fuel her power and determination. She would do it again and she could sense her new friends across Limbo.

"I'm coming," she said and she headed off to find them and free them from the cruel trickery of the dark wizard.

"And you thought you were so clever, did you not Miss Pryde-Rasputin?" Necrom said. "Allowing me to think that the child was spawned by Wisdom, instead of someone else." Kate writhed in agony as Necrom's powers over her spirit allowed him to torment her astral form. "However I sensed a falsehood in you, which is why I have added a piece of my own. You were relying on Wisdom to be your focusing point, and I have countered your manoeuvre."

"It is not over yet, wizard," Kate retorted, defiance in her voice.

Necrom laughed. "Indeed," he said. "Adam Drake has images of his own death imprinted in his mind. Elisabeth Braddock has just realised she has always been destined to lose people, and I have just destroyed the spirit of her former comrade. She is angry and will lash out, losing the concentrated focus that she needed. Brian Braddock is my helpless prisoner and Adam Destine is locked in mortal combat with the spirit of his dead son."

"I am not helpless," Braddock snarled from his bonds some way off.

"Without your sword and amulet, you will be mine." Necrom's eyes flashed with evil. "And for every moment you delay, the loop that is the time stream grows ever tighter. It is not over yet, but it will be soon enough."

Kate closed her eyes and wondered if this was what Merlyn and King Britain had planned. It wasn't working out as she had hoped it would. She knew that Necrom had added several lieutenants of his own to combat the threat that her team posed. Joseph Chapman was a hero as far as she knew, but this was a twisted and malevolent version of him. Saint John McVey was a traitor to the organisation he worked with, and Necrom had restored him to life so that he could lead Drake from the trail. However, he was not infallible in his plans, for Shirohana had been stronger than Necrom had anticipated and she had broken his control, paying an ultimate price for doing so.

Brian looked over to her, concentrating his mind. He was Captain Britain and if this wizard was the sworn enemy of Merlyn, then he would not dishonour whichever version of the wizard his Merlyn was. He would not allow it and he knew the wizard had miscalculated. While he could still hear the song of the magic within the sword, there was still hope. Kate had been right - it wasn't over yet.

"Now you die, Father," Vincent said and he threw Adam back. In his hands he began to generate some kind of energy discharge. "Even you will not survive the vortex I am creating. This world will be mine." Energy tendrils sparked out, a stray one glancing Adam and he recoiled in pain. Then he realised he had felt pain. Vincent's claims were true - he knew how to kill him. Part of Adam was relieved at this, but he suddenly realised that he wasn't finished living yet and he thought of her, his wife, his lover. Then he realised something was wrong and he looked Vincent in the eye.

"Do your worst," Adam said and Vincent sneered and unleashed the vortex he had created, energy swirling around Adam and he cried out in pain, Vincent's laughter ringing in his ears and he hoped he hadn't made a mistake. Then the energy was gone and he fell to the floor, his motor control shot to hell. His body ached all over and he wondered if he had miscalculated. Did she hate him that much?

"You're dying, Father," Vincent said, as he looked down on Adam, who could see the blurred vision of his son. "You should have left it well alone. Now…" Vincent's words died in his throat as a purple dagger pierced his head and he fell to the floor.

"Adam." A voice echoed in his head. "Adam, it's Elisabeth, can you hear me?" He tried to nod. "Trust yourself, shake off the illusion. I know you believe it is false."

"Elis… abeth?" he croaked and his vision began to clear. "That was a close one."

"Yes," she said. "It's this place. Somehow it affected you."

"Temporal energies," Adam said. "That was what Vincent was wielding."

"It wasn't him." Elisabeth gestured to the floor. "None of this is what you knew it to be. We're in Limbo."

"I thought as much, when I realised I couldn't hear her."

"Her?"

"My wife. She hated me for what I had done and never let me forget her anger. She wasn't in my head, which was surprising and very revealing." Elisabeth put her hand on his shoulder. "However the temporal energies hurt. It wouldn't have killed me, but it could have rendered me comatose." He smiled. "Thank you for making sure I didn't succumb."

"My pleasure," Elisabeth said. "Necrom seems to be using Space Phantoms and combining their shape-shifting abilities with his own of controlling the dead."

Adam frowned. "His control of the dead may be how he managed to put us here - Kate is technically a spirit housed in the body of Widget."

"We'll deal with that later." Elisabeth could feel the other Adam was in trouble. "Someone else needs our help."

"The Dawn put the island under Siege?" said Adam as McVey related what had happened to Network.

"Pretty much. The leadership, the Millennium Ascendancy, came after us personally. As Mac would say , shows we were doing something right." McVey's eyes didn't quite follow Adam as he walked and Adam knew something was wrong. In fact, the whole thing didn't quite track. How were they in Limbo and nobody was coming after them?

"Enough's enough," he said to himself. "McVey?"

The other man turned. "Yeah?" His jaw met Adam's fist, and he fell back.

"I have no idea what your game is, McVey, but I'm not playing anymore. What's going on?"

"Mac always said you were a cagey son of a bitch," McVey said, holding his jaw. "Guess I wasn't as convincing as I'd have liked."

"It was your eyes," said Adam. "They didn't feel right to me."

"Yeah, the wizard's good, but he couldn't get that quite right, could he?" McVey said, his energy wings flaring to life, and clasping Drake in a vice like grip. "He can work wonders with the dead, but he's not as good as he used to be."

"You're dead…" Drake realised what it was that had been wrong with the eyes. There had been nothing there recognisable as life, either naturally or with an echo on the electro-magnetic sphere.

"And so are you," McVey said. Drake tried to disrupt the energy wings, but McVey's power was greater than his. "For what it's worth, I'm sorry. I just want life again."

"Not going to happen," said Drake, and swung his legs, kicking McVey in the head, which jolted back as if it were going to fall off. The energy wings released him and McVey refocused his energies, keeping the head place. "At the end of the day, you're just a reanimated corpse, right?"

"Not just that," said McVey. The wings rose up, and Drake could feel the power building up, the pulsing of the energy keeping him at bay with it's sheer presence. "The energies I have are temporal in nature, provided by the energies in Limbo. Enough to create a backlash powerful enough to kill you." The pulses were growing in intensity and Drake could feel the power hitting him and he knew there was trouble.

"He's mine!" shouted a voice and Drake knew that voice. "Get out of here!"

"Destine," he said as Adam Destine ran past and tackled McVey to the ground. Drake didn't need telling twice but he knew he wasn't going to be fast enough, but then he felt himself being lifted and pulled forward. He'd known enough psionics to know a telekinetic hold when he felt one. "Hello, Miss Braddock."

"This is getting to be a habit," she said, steadying him. Then she telepathically sent Destine a single word - NOW. Destine grabbed the wings and touched them against each other and there was a massive explosion, that Elisabeth could barely shield with her mental powers, and she knew that Adam Destine had taken the brunt of the blast and she ran over. His clothing was ruined and his eyes were closed. Of McVey there was no sign and she put her hands on Destine's head and a butterfly effect formed around them both as she reached in to his mind.

"Come back to us, Adam," she said. "We're not finished yet." After a moment his eyes fluttered and opened.

"Thank you again," he said, his voice weak, but he was regaining strength quickly.

"How did you know that would work?" Drake asked.

"Blind faith," said Destine. "Sometime you have to trust to luck. And to good friends." Elisabeth nodded.

"Necrom must be getting desperate," said Drake.

"He's done a number on us all," said Elisabeth. "Body, mind and soul. Adam, your future death is on your mind. I've been forced to see that I was never going to save my brother and that I will lose more people I love and Adam…" she looked at Destine. "He's come face to face with his own weaknesses."

"Where are Brian and Pete?" asked Drake.

"Brian I can't find, but Pete…" she paused. "Wisdom's making a certain progress of his own."

He'd fought hard, and he'd fought well, and he was a little bruised and battered, but Pete Wisdom had been fighting for time itself. He'd taken his former X-Force colleagues down first, making sure that Marcus didn't have chance to use his psionic powers, then he'd sorted out Siryn, using a handful of dirt to clog her throat and prevent her from using her sonic cry. That gave him time to shoot a couple of hot knives in to Lydia and Kitty, making sure they didn't suffer. He still loved them both, and even though he knew they weren't them, he still couldn't give in that easily.

Then everyone had come after him, and he'd cut loose with everything he had and the bodies on the floor were altering and changing.

"Space phantoms," he said, looking at the littered floor and then he turned to the sound of a pair of hands slowly clapping together. He turned. "Now how did I miss you?"

"Just lucky I guess," said Chapman as he looked at his old nemesis. "I must say that was pretty impressive work. Your experience with Black Air combined with SHIELD training is rather formidable. Even if they were just space phantoms."

Pete's eyes narrowed. "They?"

"You're beginning to realise it, aren't you?" Chapman said, tearing open his shirt and Pete nodded as he saw the scar tissue around the man's heart. "How's that for another hint?"

"It's you…" Pete remembered the moment when he'd done that to him, a measure of revenge for what he'd done to Romany. Granted Wisdom had been under the direction of the Shadow King at the time, but still. "What happened, you ditch Excalibur?"

"I got a new offer," he said. "Our world seems to have a bit of trouble, right now. Looks like it's colliding with another timeline."

"Oh bloody hell," said Pete, realising that if they didn't stop Necrom soon he was going to lose his world. That wasn't going to do at all.

"Yes, quite," said Chapman. "As I remember, the last time we fought, I kicked the crap out of you."

"As I remember, you needed help," said Pete. "So, what is this? You can't let me get to the others and stop Necrom, because it'll ruin whatever cushy deal you've got and I'll expose you as the bastard I know you are." Chapman gave a thin smile. "So let's go…"