Westchester,
the Xavier Institute for Gifted Youngsters...
One Hour Ago...
Jean Grey-Summers was beginning to understand why Xavier
had founded the X-Men with just five students.
A headache was throbbing at the centre of her mind, one
that was both intense and sudden, the headmistress leaning forwards upon
the table and pinching the bridge of her nose between finger and thumb.
The canteen was packed around her, the new student body busying
themselves with their
midday
tasks, their collective minds a sea of aimless chatter.
It was impossible to block out, the sheer mountain of endless
mutterings, their young minds incapable of restraint.
There were some things a teacher did not need to know
about her students.
“It ain’t too late Jennie...”
The red headed headmistress looked up and smiled as she
heard the brusque nature of that familiar tone, the man called
Logan
dropping a plate of food down upon the table opposite.
It was a weak effort, and yet she was pleased to see him,
arguably the most irritable man on Earth since the size of the school’s
student population had exploded.
“...I can still clear the little bastards out!”
“While I’m sure you would...” Jean sighed as she leaned
backwards, smiling a little more sincerely and surprised at just how
tempting such an offer had become “...I don’t think Hank would approve,
he’s a little fond of them. Speaking of which...”
she raised an inquisitive brow “...don’t you have a class yourself?”
Logan
shrugged, chomping down on his cigar with some vague mutterings.
“Logan?”
“They’ll find their way back” he insisted gruffly.
“Logan!”
Jean sighed in exasperation, rubbing both her temples as they pounded
against her skull, already reaching out to locate the presence of the
missing children “...you can’t...”
She paused, something ripping at her mind, some lethal
thing that screamed and hissed eternal torment, something that chilled
her blood and forced her mind to tremble.
“Logan...”
she barely whispered, listening to the echoes of a foul creation,
listening to the sufferings of their former children “...something’s
wrong...”
The
Byron
Agency,
Undisclosed Location...
One Year Ago...
He could barely stop himself from giggling.
Agent Drake was in a fit of barely contained glee, his
bony frame contorting in disturbing ways as he marched the line of
sleeping bodies, his sole remaining eye jerking erratically as he
savoured his surroundings. He breathed in deeply
when he was able, inhaling the sweet sweat of new potential.
It was joyful, his thin lips twitching in excitement, the
possibilities that were laid out before his reach.
He smiled as he passed each one, all blonde hair and blue
eyes, the replicated and cloned bodies of the deceased Paige Guthrie.
The original was here as well, the body exhumed and stolen from
its grave, shrivelled and wasted by the ravages of death.
He could half believe there was still a mind, lingering within
that corpse, his scalpel thoughts piercing the veil between life and
death, finding the child slumbering wistfully within.
But it was idle fantasy, there was nothing there but grey
meat and a blank slate, an empty mind in place of what once was.
Dead and wasted and yet not forgotten.
Her sisters would see to that, new born and fresh, laid
bare and bursting with potential.
Within her genetics lay the key, the doorway to all his
fantasies, the means to create anything he desired.
Just one thought, one stimulus, and each body could be transformed, the
resources of a thousand kingdoms just waiting to be harvested.
In death, Paige Guthrie had been reborn, in death; Paige Guthrie
would provide the Agency with everything they could ever need.
“But why stop there?” he whispered, bending low as he
licked thin lips, his sole remaining eye jerking violently within its
socket as he breathed wetly upon the cheek of a dead girl.
“Why limit ourselves to such idle fancies?” he sighed
deeply, savouring the moment of epiphany.
“You will create life...” his thin frame contorted with
his giggling “...new life, wonderful life, purposeful life, you will be
the Mother of a Species...”
Agent Drake stood tall, towering amongst the rows of
sleeping Guthries, the farms from which he would soon harvest, prideful
as he stood upon the brink of evolution.
“Does that not fill your shattered heart with glee?”
The Byron Trust, Level 10, The Cradle...
Now...
The abomination of fragile bone and withered flesh wailed
with new found purpose, its twisted frame suspended by the tendrils of
living steel, the web of artificial life digging deep beneath its skin
and splintering deep into its fibres. It wailed and
spat, its hairless skull missing a lower jaw, its dark eyes now infused
with golden light, its psychic mind harvesting the psychic world around
it.
They were as one, as that pound of fragile flesh was
ripped outwards from its capsule, pulled free by the warping mass of
erratic steel, the alien life trying desperately to seek a constant
form. A pound of morbid flesh was left behind,
clinging to the tubes that had sought to bind it, but the abomination of
fragile bones and a hairless skull cared not for such a decaying mass,
its tortured mind and infant instinct grasping greedily to its rebirth.
It shuddered as its body was warped and twisted, the two
created forms of life finding solace within each other, their twin
desires becoming a single purpose. Its psychic mind
swept the world above them, biting and clawing through the many levels,
a blot of sickness that spat upon the minds of men, that ripped apart
the sane. Through its many bodies it now travelled,
a spider web of life that chattered and chittered with vengeful relish,
that tore at flesh and bone with desperate need.
“Mother...” the abomination hissed through a missing jaw,
directing its many limbs throughout the many levels towards a single,
overriding goal, the Origin of a Species.
“FIND MOTHER!”
The Byron Trust, Level 7, Research and Development 4...
Jonathon had never been good with anger, funnelling it,
channelling it, focusing it in the appropriate direction, dealing with
the source; repression had become a key to his personality.
He could channel some emotion, expressing it to strangers, being
abstract with a crowd, but when it mattered, all of it was inside,
wrapped up and stored away, a growing mass of frustration and building
fury.
Waiting to explode.
These people were dead, Jonathan walking through their
remains, the scattered remnants of those who had been massacred.
The lights were flickering on and off, briefly casting the ruined
remains in stark relief, the twisted limbs and broken bodies, the blood
that stained the windows. He wanted to throw up,
already uncomfortable within the body of Paige Guthrie, the frame his
soul was trapped within, he wanted to look away from the lifeless
features of those that were still screaming.
He wanted to do something intensely violent.
They were dead.
There could be no good reason.
“...Jono...”
The young man paused and spun around, concern washing
over his borrowed features as he heard the frailty within that tone, a
voice that should be his. It was Paige Guthrie, the
women he had thought dead, her soul trapped within his body as his had
become trapped in hers, falling to her borrowed knees as her eyes were
staring blankly.
He ran quickly to her side, the bodies of the fallen fast
forgotten as he braced his hands against her shoulders, panic gripping
his beating heart as blood was pooling freely down her features.
Something was happening; he could see the confusion in her eyes,
the panic and the pain. Something was going wrong,
something was not right within the body she inhabited, his body she was
trapped in.
“Paige!” he tried to get her to look at him, frustration
building as he came to realise he had no idea of how to help her.
“Jono...” she mumbled, her hands pressing weakly against
her temples, her thoughts leaking from her memory, her now psychic mind
listening to the whispers. “Ah can hear them...” she
barely murmured, the chittering and the chattering, the muttering and
the screaming, the light and the wailing offspring.
The thousand voices of creation.
“AH CAN HEAR THEM!”
The Byron Trust, Level 1, Transportation and Storage...
The walls were shaking.
Young Molly Hayes found it strange as she pushed her
palms against the structure, feeling the vibrations beneath her fingers.
She leaned forwards a little more, pushing her cheek against the
metal, her ear pushing against the surface, listening to the echoes from
the floors below. Sometimes it was like crying,
sometimes it was like laughing, but most of the time, it was just
whispering. Secrets told by someone very, very sad.
Young Molly Hayes pushed backwards from the wall, pouting
her lips in thought as she turned around, adjusting the positioning of
her kitty eared hat to aid her thinking. This day
had been very odd, and although she didn’t know it, there was very
little about it she would remember.
She simply wasn’t old enough to accept it.
The world was a storm of chaos, the crowds spilling
around in a manner that did not resemble order, a frenzied mass of
panicked actions that created a woeful racket. There
was a massive grouping near where she was standing, people laying down
and moaning, some even weeping as their wounds were tended, a few of
them made no sounds at all. Some of them could only
stare at her with an awful blankness.
Deciding she could not help them, she marched away,
weaving through the crowds with her short strides in search of purpose.
The elbow pads of her new uniform were being put to instant use,
striking hips this way and that as a path was cleared before her, young
Molly Hayes making progress amidst the shouts of protest and
indignation.
Finally she halted, reaching out and grabbing the belt of
someone who looked official, pulling hard and instantly earning his full
attention. She smiled brightly at the man in uniform
and ignored the wince of pain that crossed his features after she had
yanked his body armour into his pelvis, instead tumbling straight into
her question.
“Can you help me?” she queried, planting her hands
solidly on hips as she stood as tall as possible.
“I’m looking for my friends...” she elaborated “...they get into all
kinds of trouble without me!” she exasperated.
There was no immediate reaction; the man in uniform
looking down at her in what she decided was either indigestion or
disbelief.
“What?” she became quickly worried, adjusting her kitty
eared headpiece “Is there something wrong with my hat?”
The Byron Trust, Level 5, Research and Development 2...
The creature that she shot had once been human, its naked
skull grinning back at her as the bone was shattered by a concussive
round. The impact cracked like thunder, the rifle
kicking like a mule as she unleashed several bullets into the
abomination, Agent Barnes not letting up until the six limbed obscenity
wilted and collapsed. With a metallic wail it
faltered, crumpling as its frame was punctured; its mismatched limbs a
patchwork of steel and muscle.
She kept firing even as it fell, the Director of the
Facility training her eye on each new threat, unleashing a practiced
shot towards each abomination that scuttled and screeched and bore a
sickening resemblance to the once living bodies from which they had been
harvested. She wasn’t alone, stood amongst a choir
of violence, the fire team under her command laying down a wave of
suppressing fire. Finally, thankfully, as they stood
back to back within the confines of the bottleneck, their combined
offensive proved to be effective.
For the moment.
She raised one hand sharply; her fist clenched for all to
see, and immediately the fire was haltered. There
was silence, for the moments that followed the firestorm of gunfire, an
eerie calm as each and every man breathed deeply, the group of surviving
Guardsmen surviving for another moment.
Karen Barnes grimaced as she lowered her rifle, spitting
out a glob of blood as her ribs protested fiercely, her eyes burning
from the screams of that bitch still buried in the basement.
She made a second silent motion, those under her command rushing
to fulfil it, flanking one another with strict discipline as they
secured the hallway, marching amongst the dead.
Eleven remained, out of twenty, she cursed silently to
herself, adrenaline flooding through her system as the trio of scars
than pierced her torso tightened. Nine dead, nine
after descending just four floors, nine dead with another two floors to
go. It could have been much worse, she understood
that bitterly, they would all be dead by now if the bulk of this
infection, if the majority of the Behemoths weren’t moving away from
their position.
She smiled ruefully to herself, if they weren’t
consolidating exactly where she was leading them all too.
This was folly, but she was too spiteful to let it go.
She couldn’t let it win.
>>”Director”<<
She raised a hand to her earpiece as it began to hiss
with its transmission, the voice of Agent Locke echoing from up above.
“What is it?” she questioned tersely.
>>”We’re located one of the St. Croix party, she was up
here with us, we have her under guard.”<<
“It’s funny you should mention that...” Karen Barnes
holstered her rifle and spat out a second glob of blackish blood,
turning to face the rear of her Fire Teams ranks.
There he stood, glaring at her from beneath the folds of his distended
skin, another of that Bastard Cassidy’s damn protégés, Angelo Espinosa
under guard and securely handcuffed.
“We’re found one ourselves...”
The Byron Trust, Level 9, Imprisonment and Confinement 2, West Wing...
Not even pride could have stopped her from falling.
Monet St. Croix grimaced as she was slammed backwards
against the wall, the glass surface rippling as her slender frame
collided with it. She glared banefully through the
pain, her shoulder impaled by a spear of jagged steel that was the
creature’s limb, gripping at the serrated blade with her free hand as
the toes of her golden boots dangled inches above the floor.
Her eyes were bloodshot, her lips stained with crimson, her
uniform torn and shredded from a dozen lacerations, her very mind was on
fire and tortured.
Through it all she felt an overwhelming surge of
indignation, of personal shame and embarrassment, the young women roused
time and again from a drooling stupor by her own scathing disapproval,
forcing herself up onto unsteady feet to delve deeper into the pits of
hell. She glared at the creature before her with
sheer contempt, her nose unturned and a sneer upon her lips as she
regarded the monstrosity that had her pinned and beaten.
It was a mockery, distasteful in its every fabric,
spindly limbed and multi jointed, a twisted fusion of steel and flesh,
of iron and bloody muscle, contorting this way and that as its grinning
skull reared back upon a piston neck. It hissed as
it ‘breathed’ close to her own features, her lip quivering from the pain
of an impaled shoulder, the human skull leering at her with inhuman
malice. It ‘chuckled’ as it twisted its serrated
limb deeper into her wounded shoulder, a grinding sound of mismatched
gears whirling within its torso, Monet grimaced but never blinked, her
blood shot eyes refusing to break their glaring.
She could only think of the indignity, to be brought so
low by an infant psychic buried in the basement, to have her mind torn
apart and flayed by a vengeful child, to have been beaten by its
malformed offspring, the fusion of two inhuman species.
She had come so far and yet failed entirely, her efforts to end
this twisted madness below even her own notice.
Her contempt for the creature that had impaled her was as
fierce as the sneer she mustered, glaring at the malformed mockery as
the pain threatened to overwhelm her. Her body
pinned and broken, her mind flayed and set ablaze, she sneered despite
it all, a sneer in the face of a second serrated blade brought upwards
towards her features.
A sneer of contempt for her own failings.
Suddenly its skull exploded, shattering into a dozen
pieces as a single explosive round denoted the stolen bone and sent it
scattering down the hallway. Relief flooded through
her system, white hot and furious as the creature stumbled and flopped
lifelessly to the metallic floor, Monet St. Croix released and sent
crumpling into a heap. It was relief that blinded
all her senses, the young woman aimless and unable to move a single
muscle, bleeding from the shoulder and another dozen wounds, the young
woman unable to utter a single word as she was rescued by her ‘savour’.
The sneer of personal contempt had failed to falter.
“Easy now...”
The words of the Irishmen intoned, Sean Cassidy of all
men pulling her from the abyss.
“...I’ve got ye...”
The Byron Trust, Level 9, Imprisonment and Confinement 2, East Wing...
For the first time in her life, young Jubilation Lee had
become single minded.
She half stumbled through the hallways; her limbs
unsteady and her feet unsure, the heavy golden boots cracking upon
shards of scattered bone and slipping upon the pools of blood.
She couldn’t really see, not in the flickering darkness, her own
brow stained with blood where her cracked skull had been crudely tended.
The wound had been stitched together by razor pincers, her life
had been saved by those who had killed all others.
She stumbled and she limped, left behind by the behemoth
with bear trap jaws to fulfil a different purpose, allowed to live due
to an unforeseen kinship, a common ground forged by pain within the
bowels of the Byron Agency. Her arm swung limply at
her side, swaying with every step, her every shallow breadth, nerves and
life returning to that once dislocated limb.
She almost fell, young Jubilation bracing herself against
one wall, he muscles growing tense as she felt compelled to pursue her
single purpose, a single desire that rattled around her cortex.
She could feel it, she could taste it, she could almost smell it,
that desire that was fuelled by another will, a sickening force that
clawed deep down and ripped out all those repressed resentments, the
darkest of her needs.
The greatest of her heartbreaks.
“Cassidy...”
She hissed, tears streaming down her tortured features,
giving voice to the greatest of betrayals, the man who had become a
father, a father who had become a monster.
“...Cassidy!”
The Byron Trust, Level 9, Imprisonment and Confinement 2, West Wing...
“Sean,
I want you to know...”
He closed his eyes as he heard those distant words, the
former X-Man carrying the prone body of his former student as tenderly
as he would a child. They were an echo, whispered
from long ago, the sentiments of a man who was now long dead and who had
inspired the world with his convictions, a man who had placed his faith
upon his shoulders. A man whose words he now
remembered more frequently than ever.
“...there is not a living soul I trust more than you to shoulder the
responsibility of training the new Generation of Mutants”.
They were bittersweet now, Sean Cassidy opening his eyes
as he lay the wounded body of Monet St. Croix down upon the mattress.
The Irishmen couldn’t help but remember them, each night and
every morning, the act of faith he had betrayed, the grace from which he
had fallen. The greatest mistakes of his entire
life, the most horrible of sins.
The days in which he had betrayed his children.
He frowned as he looked upon his fallen student, her body
battered and broken and wounded in a dozen places.
It was his responsibility to prevent this, to train them, to protect
them, to help them to become everything that they could be, to catch
them when they fall. It was his responsibility,
those words echoing back from that Autumn sun, his fatigued expression
gazing down upon his hand, upon the circle of scars around his thumb, it
was one he always failed.
Reluctantly he looked back to Monet, his former student
feverish upon the mattress, her brow creased as her mind was under
siege, barely clinging to being conscience. Slowly
he raised his wrist towards her features, the Irishmen whispering as
sternly as he could.
“Lassie...” his tone demanded her attention “...tell me
ye name!”
“M...” she murmured, trapped somewhere between reality
and fantasy “...Monet...”
His board shoulders tensed as the metallic bracelet about
his wrist whirled and popped, the silver construct making a quick ping
and a tiny click as it popped off. Sean Cassidy felt
immediate relief, reflectively rubbing the raw skin, feeling a familiar
tightness grip his throat as the inhibiter was disabled.
As the former X-Men known as Banshee was finally and
completely freed.
“An’ I
won’t be lettin’ ye down”.
He paused and closed his eyes a second time, his own
voice echoing across the ages, his own promise to a dead man, the first
day of his greatest.
If only the ones that followed it had not proven to be
his darkest...
“I’m sorry lass...” he apologised sincerely, Banshee
standing tall and adjusting the armour about his torso he had borrowed
from his own guards corpse. His eyes lingered upon
her fallen form for a little longer, pacing towards the open doorway and
slinging his rifle across his shoulder, within her face he saw his
children, the students he had lost.
Before he uttered another word he sealed the doorway, the
bulkhead slamming shut and sealing the feverish Monet inside, Sean
Cassidy imprisoning her within his former cell, leaving her behind...
“But I cannie take ye with me...”
The Byron Trust, Level 9, Imprisonment and Confinement 2, East Wing...
Laura Kinney hissed as the foul little beast bit down
deep into her neck, the razor pincers of the metallic beetle shredding
flesh and cracking the bone of her spinal column.
The tiny girl with raven hair curled up and spat as she reached behind
and clawed at the shrieking beast burrowing deep beneath her flesh, the
creature wailing its metallic squeal as she gripped it between her
bloodied fingers. With a feral snap and a howl of
pain she ripped it free, a shower of blood about her shoulders as she
slammed it downwards, the artificial life squirming violently between
her fingers and the now crimson floor.
She spat in irritation as she remained hunched forwards,
the young girl on all fours as she hissed in pain, the cracking of her
bones ringing in the air as her shredded flesh stitched itself back
together. It was her birthright, her body healing
rapidly and mending her every ill, and yet the pain would always linger,
the damage would always be remembered.
The young girl cracked her head violently to the side, a
snarl upon her curled lips as the bones were set back in place, the
trails of raven hair spilling about her youthful features.
She grumbled her annoyance as the squirming beast continued
clawing at her fingers, flaying flesh and muscles with vicious pincers
and as it wailed its eternal malice.
Laura only spat in her reply, raising her other hand and
allowing the set of bone claws to erupt out from between her knuckles,
slamming them down against the pinned creature and watching as she
impaled its vengeful frame. It shuddered and lay
still, releasing a stolen breadth, bleeding out and dying beneath her
bloodied grasp.
With a final spit, Laura tossed it aside almost idly,
watching her own fingers as the shredded digits repaired themselves and
bones clicked back into place. As the wounded limb
was rapidly stitched together, she raised her head and stared upon a
bloody handprint, one that stained the wall and was not hers.
She sniffed the air, searching for anything that lingered before
turning quickly and peering intently down the hallway.
There, she silently decided, retrieving her puzzle box
with tiny hands...she had gone down there...
The Byron Trust, Level 7, Research and Development 4...
Jonathon Starsmore released a frustrated shout as he was
slammed down backwards onto the floor, the body he was trapped within,
the frame of Paige Guthrie, protesting fiercely from the impact.
He could scarcely believe his eyes, the corridor swarming with
the bodies of twisted constructs, a maelstrom of chaos and inhuman
hybrids filling every inch and wailing inhuman obscenities.
They surrounded him with their writhing and mismatched bodies,
some bloated and obscene, others spindly and erratic, all of them
constructed from flesh and bone, from steel and muscle.
He twisted as best he could, flesh tearing as one beast
pinned him down, the massive hound with a serrated spine and bear trap
jaws breathing down dryly upon his features. His
frustration grew as his skin tore further, oddly painless beneath the
pressure of his breaking ribcage, twisting his head to try and find
Paige Guthrie, the girl trapped within his body.
She was almost lost beneath the writhing bodies, just
like he was, struggling to reach the surface as spines of golden steel
penetrated flesh and bone, burrowing into muscle. He
panicked, they both panicked, suddenly attacked and overwhelmed by a
horde of creatures that defied all sense of logic.
“PAIGE!!” he cried out, desperately reaching out a hand
and hopelessly beyond reach, desperately trying to hold her, desperately
trying to save her. He could hear it, like he always
could, that bullet that had killed her, he could hear it with his every
heartbeat.
“PAIGE!!” he shouted out again, this time striking
upwards with his elbow, striking the jaw of the behemoth atop him across
its bear trap jaws, startled to find his own limb had become adamantium.
The creatures head recoiled, snapping back sharply from the
impact, Jonathon finding Paige Guthries genetic gift was now in full
effect, his borrowed body shedding its outer skin to reveal a more
dangerous frame beneath.
He struck upwards with a knee, grunting painfully as skin
split against a metallic hide, an adamantium limb being revealed beneath
the spurt of blood and sending the behemoth atop him raggedly rolling
off. There was a flailing of limps, of frenzied
movements as the enraged creatures sought to swarm him, to pin him down
as he dragged his protesting body up onto its unwilling knees.
He kicked this way and that, barely any thought put into
any movement, just a desperate need to strike out with sharp knees and
brutal elbows, his metallic limbs crunching steel and stolen flesh
beneath each and every impact. He grabbed one by its
skull like features, slamming it into a window, he stomped down upon a
second, shattering its ribcage.
He kept on fighting, but there were too many, his vision
obscured by the inhuman onslaught, his way obstructed by their writhing
bodies, their eternal shrieking.
“PAIGE!!” he desperately cried out, struggling to reach
his only care.
“MOTHER!!” the beasts of a thousand voices cried back,
shrieking with metallic screeching, weeping with inhuman tears.
“MOTHER!!”
The Byron Trust, Level 9, Imprisonment and Confinement 2, West Wing...
The outline was so seamless; Sean Cassidy was almost
convinced it wasn’t there.
He concentrated, his hands slowly running along the wall,
his fingers trailing across the metallic surface as he searched for the
smallest of imperfections. It was cold beneath his
touch, sturdy and unyielding, the panel the same as the hundred others
that lined the hallway, welded and unmoving. He
concentrated and searched, looking for something that wasn’t there.
The Irishmen had tried to force his way upwards, the
former X-Man fighting as best he could through the facility, but he had
been forced back down. One floor after another he
had retreated, right back to where he had first started, right back to
just two hundred feet from his own cell, hoping for a miracle.
Hoping that Agent Drake was the self preserving Bastard
Cassidy had always imagined him to be.
Hoping that this Byron Facility was the same as...
Suddenly there was a silent click, Cassidy holding still
as something shifted, a movement beneath his fingers, a latch that had
been broken. With a hiss of air and the movement of
squealing gears, the panel shifted slowly backwards, cracking pressure
seals as it slid away.
The smell was dank and old, the air frigid and stale, and
yet the passageway was unmistakable, the man size route that led
straight up and tumbled all the way down. It was a
chasm of sheer darkness; it was the light at the end of the tunnel.
“Drake ye paranoid bastard...” he quietly whispered, the
former X-Man peering upwards into the gloom “...ye just might prove
useful yet...”
“CASSIDY!!”
He froze, leaning back just a fraction as Jubilation Lee
stood not ten feet away, her hands outstretched, her fingers pointed in
a trigger, her eyes bloodshot with fury. He cursed
himself, the Irishmen berating his own mistake, his rifle discarded and
on the floor, his throat still tense and unresponsive.
She was waiting for him, her posture slumping like a mannequin,
her eyes intent with purpose; she was waiting for him to move.
She was waiting for him to breadth...
She couldn’t stop herself from crying.
Young Jubilation Lee was trapped between the past and
present, her surroundings so familiar and yet so alien, her memories
drowning within that cell in which she had been beaten.
It had been so easy to ignore it, to bury it to be forgotten, the
painful memories discarded and left unprocessed. She
didn’t want to remember it, the cold and hunger, the pain and thirst,
the hours of torture because of a man she trusted.
It was easy to ignore it, it was painful to remember it.
It was too painful...
She stood there barely moving, her shoulders slouched and
one hand outstretched, her fingers pointed like a pistol, vibrant and
violent light bursting about her digits. She didn’t
want to hurt him, the man who was like a Father, a man she had bitten
after he had offered water, but it was love that was intertwined with
hate, with betrayal and heartache.
She didn’t understand, she wanted to but she couldn’t,
how could it be possible to both love and hate a man so much?
How could she want to kill him and forgive him at the same time?
“Why?” she made a strangled whisper, her eyes red and
swollen, her throat rasped and raw “...Why?”
“I’m sorry Lass...” Sean Cassidy intoned calmly, slowly
raising one hand to calm her “...but I have nae excuse...”
She tried to swallow, young Jubilee finding it difficult
to breadth as the lights she projected were bursting fiercely, something
dark and sickly gripping at her broken heartstrings, rummaging and
ripping at her feelings, intensifying her repressions.
She couldn’t stop herself from crying, her fingers
clenching tightly...until her world exploded with a sudden burst of
fury, a sharp crack smashing across her cranium and sending her tumbling
into a boneless heap. She was aware for just a
moment longer, young Jubilation lee startled and confused, her senses
blinded by the impact, her vision slowly fading, her head throbbing with
unexpected pain.
A tiny girl with raven hair appeared before her fallen
senses, crouched on all fours and observing her intently, one hand
curled up into a bloodied fist, the other one extended and patting her
gently on the forehead. She was dimly aware of her
surroundings, Jubilee slowly fading from the world as the tiny girl with
raven hair, the one who had attacked her, the child from the children’s
cell, observed the damage she had caused with a face of regretful worry.
“It’s alright Lassie...”
Young Jubilation Lee could barely hear the mumbled words
of Cassidy...
“...You nae hit her that hard, she will be alright....I
suppose ye want tae be coming with...”
The Byron Trust, Level 7, Research and Development 4...
Paige Guthrie had been desperate to be an X-Man.
She had remained awake at night, hidden beneath her
covers, reading the letters from her brother by feeble torchlight,
imaging that she was excelling in his place. It was
like a dream, the stories he would tell, of other worlds and fantastical
adventures, aspiring to be recognised in a fearful world, breaking
boundaries and escaping the mundanity of her current life.
She wanted to be an X-Man.
She wanted to be the best.
And then she died.
A bullet pierced her heart and sent her spiralling into
oblivion, lost, alone and utterly unable to fulfil her dreams, utterly
unable to forge a future, utterly unable to live.
But he had saved her, by chance or accident, it didn’t matter, he had
saved her and dragged her from the darkness, tucked away within the
recesses of his mind, safe and warm and eternally guarded.
She had died and now she lived, trapped within his body,
forced to watch as Jonathon Starsmore exchanged their fates.
Paige struggled as best she could, the twisted creatures
forged from flesh and steel pinning her to the floor, metal talons
digging deep into her cheek, frenzied whispers filling her every
thought. She could hear them, the frightened and
confused children, the new life finding form within inhuman torsos, the
infants clinging to their pain and malice like a lifeboat, keeping them
afloat in a violent world.
She could hear them but she could only see him, through
eyes that were bleeding beneath the eyelids, Jonathon trapped within her
body and being forced up onto his feet. They were
surrounding him, the behemoths of a thousand faces, one massive beast
prowling on jagged paws, Paige still struggling to save him.
“Mother...” they were whispering, metallic screeches and
harsh whimpers, Paige could only watch as trails of metallic light
burrowed deep into his fibres, pain twisting across his features.
“Jono...” Paige was desperate to get up, her own flesh
pierced in a thousand different places, the viral life form spreading
throughout her body, slowly digging into her mind.
She struggled and bucked to no avail, trying to move a single limb,
trying to drag herself forwards.
“Jono!” she called out, her eyes stinging with harsh
tears, the body she had borrowed burning at the core.
“JONO!!” she cried out as a spike of golden light was
slammed into his forehead, the man she loved convulsing beneath the
impact, the man who had saved her spitting as his mind was broken.
“JONO!!”
she
yelled in desperation, clawing at the floor to try and drag her body
forward, her fingers burning with a blazing light, her torso igniting
with violent clarity. She was desperate, she was
determined, she was willed on by an unwillingness to fail that had lived
within her since childhood.
She refused to allow this to be her folly.
She refused to allow this to be her failure.
She refused to let him die.
She reached towards the man who had saved her, so far
away and slowly dying, she reached out and did the only thing she could
do.
She screamed, Paige Guthries now telepathic mind
exploding, a violent outburst that ripped apart the boundaries between
this world and the next, sending a chain reaction rippling throughout
the complex and all the psychic minds around her, rupturing the
boundaries of sanity, and plunging the world into further chaos...
Westchester, the Xavier Institute for Gifted Youngsters...
She cried out in pain and ripped off the headset as
Cerebro exploded in a frenzied storm of power, Jean Grey and the machine
recoiling violently from the psychic backlash that had ripped its way
throughout the Astral Plane. She gripped her temples
as she fell, arcs of electronic lightning bursting free from the
controls as the safeguards were obliterated, the visions still ripping
through her mind after she had tried to find their former children.
It was like a plague, a festering disease of unrelenting
hate of violence, an infant ripped out from its womb and swallowing up
everything around it. The children were lost in
there, the X-Men’s former students, trapped within a whirlwind of
malice.
A repeating cycle of despair.
“JEAN!!” Logan cried out, the X-Man immediately by her
side, braving the blazing arcs of electricity to be beside his fallen
team mate, grabbing her by the shoulders and dragging her away from the
unstable Cerebro.
“My God...Logan...it’s bleeding Logan!” she managed to
gasp between her heavy breathing, her eyes bloodshot and barely focused,
blinded by the horrifying visions of a drowning earth and the supernova.
“THE ASTRAL PLANE IS BLEEDING!!”
