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Chapter 34 – Masks and Moles
🕑 Added 2025-08-14 11:17:16 +0000 UTCJay stood in Manhattan Square Park, staring at his phone screen. The notification from Caliban had been simple enough: People are getting restless. Come now.
But simple didn't capture the ice that had settled in his chest, or the way his hands had gone completely steady for the first time in weeks. He pocketed the phone and turned toward the subway entrance.
"Bobby!" he called out, his voice carrying that particular edge that made people stop what they were doing. "I need Maria and Linda on Masque's vitals and location constantly. Any change, I want to know immediately."
Bobby emerged from the kitchen of their safe house carrying two steaming coffee cups, took one look at Jay's face, and stopped mid-step. The cups clinked against each other in his suddenly unsteady hands.
"You sound different."
"Do I?" Jay pulled out his burner phone and scrolled through contacts with mechanical precision. "I'm calling in a favor first."
The phone rang twice before a familiar voice drawled, rich with Mexican accent and street-smart attitude. "¿Jay? Bit early for blood theft, cabrón, or you just missing my pretty face?"
"Xabi." Jay's voice was flat, businesslike. "Someone took one of my people. I need you to scope out the Hellfire Club, and I need it quiet."
A pause. When Xabi spoke again, his usual playful tone had sharpened. "Órale, one of your people? You sound different, hermano. Like someone stepped on your tail."
"Can you help or not?"
The silence stretched for three heartbeats. Then: "Sí, claro. Better than bleeding old pendejos dry anyway. Give me a few hours, eh?"
Jay hung up without pleasantries and caught Bobby staring at him with those weathered eyes that had seen too much.
"What?"
"Nothing." Bobby set the coffee down carefully. "Just... 'one of my people' sounded different coming out of your mouth. More like you actually meant it."
Jay shrugged, but something in his chest had gone tight at the words. A week ago, he would have said 'asset' or 'network member.' Now the phrase felt natural, protective. Possessive in a way that should have worried him but didn't.
"Have we confirmed the moles?"
"Three confirmed Hellfire contacts, but there's overlap with SHIELD and X-Men connections too. Someone's playing multiple angles." Bobby showed him the tablet, data streaming across the screen in neat columns. "Classic intelligence work—create so much noise you can't tell who's working for who."
"How many suspects total?"
"Five. All Morlocks, all with different potential motivations, but we couldn't narrow it down further without..." Bobby gestured vaguely at Jay's head. "Without your particular methods."
Jay studied the data, feeling that familiar analytical calm settling over him like armor. It was the same feeling he'd had when planning the Masque confrontation—cold, clear, and absolutely certain of what needed to be done.
"We'll need the masks for this. Get Power Broker and Lasso ready."
Bobby nodded and headed for their equipment cache. Jay was already mentally cataloging what he'd need: the voice modulator, the modified costume that made him look more imposing in the tunnels, and most importantly, the psychological distance that came with wearing someone else's face.
His phone buzzed with an incoming call. Jay glanced at the screen—Domino's number. For a moment, he considered letting it go to voicemail. Then, on pure impulse, he answered.
"Hey, Domino. You free for dinner tonight?"
Complete silence on the other end.
Finally, her voice came through, incredulous and amused in equal measure: "Are you asking me out right now? While planning some kind of underground interrogation mission? Wasn't I supposed to be your lucky mascot, not your dinner date?"
"Maybe."
She laughed, a sound like dice hitting felt. "You know what? Sure. This should be interesting. Either you're having a breakdown, or you're finally getting your priorities straight. Either way, I want a front-row seat."
After hanging up, Bobby stared at him with an expression caught between amusement and genuine concern.
"You know, when I said you should go on dates, I didn't—"
"Right now, while hunting traitors, I know." Jay waved him off, but felt something loosening in his chest.
"I was gonna say I'm proud of you, but—"
"Butt out, old man." But Jay felt lighter somehow, like something had loosened in his chest. The kind of lightness that came from doing something purely because you wanted to, not because it served some larger strategic purpose.
Bobby held up his hands in mock surrender. "Fair enough. Just don't blame me when she shoots you for being late because you were busy terrorizing Morlocks."
"She'd probably find that charming."
"That's what worries me."
The Morlock tunnels felt different with the mask on. Heavier. More dangerous. Jay adjusted his Power Broker voice modulator as they descended through maintenance corridors that hadn't seen city workers in decades. The familiar weight of the costume changed how he moved, how he held himself. The Power Broker wasn't just Jay with better equipment—he was someone else entirely. Someone who made hard choices and lived with the consequences.
The main chamber buzzed with nervous energy—children peeking around corners before being shooed back by watchful parents, elderly Morlocks gathering in worried clusters, the usual background hum of daily life replaced by tense whispers.
Five chairs sat arranged in a semicircle, each occupied by a restrained figure. Harsh lighting from jury-rigged flood lamps cast stark shadows across faces that ranged from defiant to terrified. The Morlock leadership formed a loose perimeter—Callisto at the center with her arms crossed, flanked by Sack's massive, radiation-scarred form and Beautiful Dreamer's ethereal presence.
"Power Broker." Callisto stepped forward, her enhanced senses reading the room's tension like a book. "They're ready."
Jay studied the suspects with clinical detachment. Three of them couldn't meet his masked gaze, their body language screaming guilt. A woman with gills and shark-like features stared back with pure defiance. An older man with crystalline skin that caught and fractured the harsh light just looked tired—bone-deep exhausted in the way that came from carrying shame too long.
The weight of the voice modulator, the way the eyeholes narrowed his vision, the subtle change in how others looked at him—it all combined to create distance. Jay could feel guilt, could second-guess himself. The Power Broker simply acted.
When he spoke, his voice carried the electronic distortion that had become his signature in the tunnels.
"Look at me," he said quietly, letting Kilgrave's stolen ability flow into his words.
It felt like swallowing poison. The viral component of the power circulated under his skin, repulsive and wrong, but undeniably effective. All five heads turned in perfect unison, eyes glazing with artificial compliance.
"Tell me why you betrayed your people."
The first three spoke in overlapping confessions: "Money." "Surface lives." "The Hellfire Club promised integration—real integration, not just tolerance."
The woman with gills fought the compulsion, her enhanced physiology giving her some resistance. When she finally spoke, her voice carried more venom than submission: "I didn't betray anyone. Storm was our real leader before she handed the position to Callisto. Then you showed up, taking authority you never earned, making decisions for people whose struggles you've never lived."
But it was the crystalline man whose words cut deepest. His voice carried the weight of a father's desperate love: "SHIELD offered to pay for my wife's surgery, the kind that costs more than I'll make in ten lifetimes. All I had to do was report on activities and... provide information about the Power Broker's methods and capabilities."
The old Jay would have focused on the betrayal. This Jay couldn't stop thinking about the desperation that had led to it.
"Beautiful Dreamer," he said, his modulated voice carrying absolute authority. "Adjust their memories. Remove operational knowledge and details of this interrogation. Replace it with confusion about recent events."
Beautiful Dreamer stepped forward, already drawing on her cigarette to induce the dream-smoke necessary for memory manipulation. Her power took hold of the first suspect smoothly, but then Jay felt something else—the lightest brush against his own mind. A whisper of compulsion: Trust me completely.
His mental shields slammed up automatically.
Jay's hand was around her throat before conscious thought caught up with instinct. He lifted her just enough that her toes barely touched the ground, his power suppression ability severing her telepathic connection like a blade through silk.
The chamber went absolutely silent. Even breathing seemed to stop.
"Never," Jay said, his voice carrying the kind of quiet menace that was somehow worse than shouting, "try that again."
He set her down with deliberate gentleness that was somehow more threatening than violence would have been. Beautiful Dreamer's hands shook as she nodded understanding.
"Finish the memory work. Just that. Nothing else."
She completed the task in silence, her usual ethereal confidence replaced by the stark awareness of how quickly mercy could become judgment.
After the suspects were led away—the three guilty of simple greed to face exile, the father to face community service until his debt was worked off, the defiant woman released with a warning—Jay addressed the crowd that had gathered.
He pulled off his mask, and several Morlocks stepped back instinctively. Without the technological barrier, his anger was raw and immediate.
"Masque has been taken by the Hellfire Club." His voice carried through the chamber with the kind of authority that didn't need amplification. "They've infiltrated us, bought our people, turned them against each other."
The crowd leaned forward, drawn by the gravity in his words.
"Everyone of you came here because the surface world decided you didn't matter. You built something better down here—a real community, a place where being different wasn't a crime. The Hellfire Club wants to destroy that. They want to prove that you're still victims, still powerless, still at the mercy of people who see you as things rather than people."
Jay's gaze swept the chamber, making eye contact with faces that had learned to expect disappointment.
"They took Masque to send a message—that they can reach into your home and take anyone they want. They took your children's future, your right to exist peacefully among above-ground people."
His voice rose, carrying the kind of conviction that could start revolutions or end them.
"But you're not victims. Not anymore. You're a community that's survived everything the world threw at you and built something worth protecting. Masque might be a scumbag who caused you all harm and suffering—but he's ours to punish. And no one gets to just take what's ours."
Hands rose throughout the crowd. Not just the leadership, but ordinary Morlocks ready to fight for one of their own.
"Callisto," Jay said, tension crackling in his voice, "hit them directly. Loud and visible, but clean—no civilians get hurt."
"Direct assault?" Callisto's scarred face hardened. "That's not how we operate. We survive by staying invisible."
"Invisibility didn't protect Masque." The words came out sharper than Jay intended. "Sometimes you have to make noise to be heard."
"And sometimes noise gets people killed," she shot back. "These are my people's lives you're risking."
"They're their own people who choose to do this." The statement hung in the air between them.
"Caliban, I need tracking on all their mutants. Every enhanced individual in that building, I want to know their positions."
His comm unit buzzed with an incoming transmission. Xabi's voice came through crystal clear: "Got what you need, mate. Three floors above ground, but the basement's showing unusual activity, can’t enter due to the bio lock. Heavy security for a would-be club, and you wouldn't believe the members I managed to peek at."
Jay looked around the chamber—strike teams forming, Caliban's pale features tightening in concentration as his tracking ability reached out across the city, Morlocks who'd spent years hiding now preparing for a fight they'd chosen rather than one forced on them.
This was what leadership actually looked like.
"Tell me everything," Jay said into the comm.
.
