He dreamed he was floating. Lilly pads and long cattails drifted by, slowly, as he let the lazy current carry him away. There was no sound, and there was no sensation. The sun was high, sparkling against the eddies, and it should have warmed his skin, but it did not. The water that crept by him, that lapped at his ears and toes, should have been cool, but it was not. It was a strange dream, one he had never had before. What was more, he knew he was dreaming, and knew it with complete certainty. He didn’t remember ever doing that before either. Weren’t you supposed to be able to control things whendreaming like this? He had read that somewhere, or maybe someone had told him that. But why change things, when floating felt so good?
Wait.
He had to wake up. There was something he had to do, someplace he had to be. Someone was expecting Sean Cassidy. He tried to open his eyes. But hadn’t they already been open, hadn’t he just been watching the muddy river bank? It felt so good to drift on, why would he want to be anywhere else? He was always trying to get to the next place, always moving, running, hiding, when was the last time he had ever just let life flow by him? It must have been before Sean met him. Met who? Why, him of course, at that place.
Before he had met him, it had been so dark, and it had seemed so pointless. There was running, yes, but it was running for the sake of running, running because stopping meant death. Afterwards, he had been given a direction, a goal, something to run to. You don’t forget that kind of thing.
The end came suddenly, one second floating, and the next not. Stuck there in place, like a fly caught in honey, but only for a second, because then Sean was standing. His good black trench coat hugged him close, made him feel snug and secure. He ran his fingers along the buttons, but didn’t feel the ridges, or the coarse wool between them. Where was he going? Where was he running to now?
Oh, that was easy. The only place there was to go. Forward. When it came down to it, no one really had a choice in the matter. Ever try to running to the right, or to the left? Very hard, and very silly looking. To prove his point, Sean tried to run to the side, good black wingtips darting over each other, and over the short green grass of the meadow.
Yes. Yes, forward. But where? What would he see there? Who would he meet? At that, Sean stopped running and sat down, crushing the dandelions underneath him. It made him sad, thinking about it, thinking about what he would see there. Why? Stupid question. Sean frowned at it, frowned at no one, only the air and the meadow before him. Stupid, insensitive question. Why would he think that? Was he some kind of monster? He had used to think so, he had listened too much to his mother, his father, other people trying to define what it meant to be Sean. He was a good man, not a monstrous one. Why would he think that?
White ceiling. Blinding light. Where was he now? Sean tried to roll over onto his side, but something held him down, stopping him. The ceiling was so white it was painful, like it was pulsing, shifting, sending tremors down into the back of his head. Someone should really have turned down the lights in there. Sean opened his mouth to suggest it, but when he spoke, only a soft gurgling came out.
“Shhh.”
Someone was holding his hand, leaning over him. It was a woman, with long, black hair, and ruby lips. She looked sad, standing above him, pressing a finger to her mouth.
“Close your eyes.” Not a bad suggestion. That accent… British? Well, what do you know, a lovely British lass was taking care of him. Good. But she really should have let him roll over.
Roll over? Of course he could. He could roll over and float on his stomach, but then, how could he watch those white cattails wave in the breeze? Now, where was this river taking him? Where did Sean Cassidy need to go? He had to think. It was very, very important.
“Subject:
Ororo Monroe. Assessment Level One. Safety Precautions engaged. Beginning
Simulation.”
Victor Creed studied
his newest charge with a practiced eye, measuring her strengths, searching
out her weaknesses. He smelled fear on the air, a bitter stench of emotion
which assaulted those as sensitive to it as he was. If he had had hair
on the back of his neck, it would have been standing on end. As it was,
he realized he was subconsciously licking his teeth, slowly, along their
pointed tips. He stopped himself there, an old exercise, now well practiced,
and brought his reactions under control. There was a time and a place,
and it would not do for Ororo to see him drooling. The room they stood
in was the largest Whiteground had to offer, and in many ways it was also
the most important. The room was seventy-five meters in every direction,
with smooth, reflective metal walls, and a beige floor painted with concentric
white circles. Both Creed and Ororo were in their black jumpsuit uniforms,
with Ororo tying her straight, shoulder length white hair neatly behind
her. “Relax,”
Creed said, softly, “You have everything you need inside of you.” Twenty meters down,
on the left wall, a panel slid open and a small twang sounded. A black
metal disk sprang out of the panel, sailing easily through the air, and
Creed waited patiently. He heard Ororo take a small, determined breath
to steady her nerves, but even that was tentative, and he did not need
to hear the disk hit the ground and slide along it to know that she had
failed. Recruits this young, they always failed the first time. “Again.”
And the next panel opened. “He
doesn’t look so dangerous, now, does he?” Shiro Yoshida looked
over at Sebastian Sokal and snorted, rolling his eyes for good measure.
For the Japanese mutant it was a monumental display of emotion, akin to
anyone else laughing hysterically for a good minute. Shiro was sure his
companion realized this, but was simply either to preoccupied to care,
or to accustomed to Shiro to comment. Either way, Shiro returned his attention
to the thick glass window separating them from the prisoner. It didn’t
look like much of a jail cell to keep such a threat in. With its padded
white walls and wide observation window, it seemed as if they were holding
Sean Cassidy in a hospital room instead of a prison, and Shiro would have
preferred a morgue to both. “I would have
thought you’d be in with Creed, showing Ororo the ropes.” Shiro wished the young
man would shut up, but knew that he wouldn’t. It was a failing of
Sebastian’s that he talked incessantly when nervous. Perhaps it
was best to humor him. “How could I
be anywhere else, with this… rogue among us?” Shiro’s
eyes steadied on Cassidy, strapped down on his white bed, wires and tubes
hanging off from him in every direction. The sleeping man was smiling
now, as he had usually been for his stay here at Whiteground. “Come on, Shiro,
if we can’t contain him here, no one can. Where else could be safer?”
Shiro looked at the viewing window before he replied, wondering how quickly
Cassidy could have shattered it if he were awake. Seconds, definitely.
Probably less. “A grave, Sebastian.
A grave would be safer.” Shiro heard the young man shift his weight
awkwardly, moving restlessly from foot to foot. “They put him
on any more muscle relaxants, and that’s exactly where he’ll
be.” Shiro wrenched his gaze away from Cassidy, to raise his eyebrow
at Sebastian. The soft, rhythmic beeping of the heart monitors provided
a constant monotony to their conversation. “Don’t look at
me like that, Shiro. We still need information from him.” And that,
the Japanese mutant could not deny. A traitor. A conspiracy? Who would
be mad enough to harbor mutants in this world? Or worse, were they all
mutants? Was it some secret cabal of genetic horrors, hiding out there
in the shadows? Could the screenings be flawed? A chilling thought, one
Shiro preferred not to dwell on, since the implications were so horrific. “If you are
so confident of our security, why are you here, watching him with me?”
Sebastian was silent for a moment, and Shiro perked up a little at that.
He had found these SHIELD types were often more revealing in what they
did not say, than in what they did. “Keeping an
eye on Elisabeth. She’s been… despondent lately. Since Kurt.”
Both men’s eyes strayed over to where she sat next to Cassidy, in
a plain wooden chair, her eyes shut tightly in concentration. “He was a friend.” “Yes.” Shiro turned fully
now, withdrawing his attention from the prisoner in a way it hadn’t
been withdrawn in hours. He considered his teammate standing there, fastidiously
keeping his eyes away from Shiro, his face half hidden behind his unruly
brown hair. It occurred to the Japanese mutant he did not know much about
this young man he served with, and that this young man did not know much
about him. “He was a friend
-- to all of us. But this Cassidy… he reminds me of Wagner.” Sebastian still wouldn’t
look at him, but Shiro caught the lighter tone in his voice when he replied,
“Really?” “Yes. Both strong,
resourceful men. Both dedicated, and a bit reckless,” Shiro paused,
and the small smile his companion wore told him he was probably thinking
of a dozen or so memories of Kurt that had been brought to mind. As Shiro
was. “But, Sebastian, both men had their secrets. Secrets we had
no way of knowing.” Sebastian made no
move to reply again, lost in his own inner thoughts. Shiro returned his
attention to Cassidy, watching intently for any change in the man’s
condition, listening to the smooth, steady beat of the heart monitor. “I
can’t do this!” Ororo cried, flinging her arms out wide. “I’ve
never been able to control it. It just comes to me; it just happens.” Scattered around the
beige floor was an array of black metal discs, more than twenty so far,
and all of them had landed just where they had been originally thrown.
There had been discussion among the directors about just this problem,
and how to combat it. Recruiting young got you the inexperience, the unpredictability
of youth. Recruiting old brought its own problems, for any mutant that
survived long enough in the world to harness their power was a hunted
mutant, filled with the bitterness that an existence as a fugitive fed.
Creed needed only to walk down the hallway and pay a visit to Sean Cassidy
to see the proof of that. “Your mutation
is a part of you, Ororo, like any other part. Saying you can’t control
it, is like saying you can’t control your foot, or your hand. Fearing
it is fearing your nose, or your eye.” It should have been Shiro,
or Elisabeth in here, telling her these things. Creed just didn’t
have the patience necessary to help this young woman, to give her the
confidence she needed. Creed knew what he was good at, and it certainly
wasn’t this. Still though, he was what Ororo had. And if Creed was
impatient, then the directors would be merciless. “My
eye never tore apart a building. My nose never killed anyone
on accident!” Count
your blessings then, frail. Creed shook his head,
clearing his thoughts again. That had never happened, of course, it was
all a symptom of his trauma. The doctors had explained it to him, in oh-so-careful
terms, that those horrific “memories” he dreamed of were his
subconscious trying to construct a past where none remained. When you
surrounded yourself with as much shit as Victor Creed had, you started
thinking that’s all your life had ever been. “Then don’t
try to control it. Don’t try to fight it. Just let it do its thing.
Let the fear take you, and focus it on that disc.” A dangerous way
to get in touch with the mutation, but they had to begin somewhere. The
first step in facing your fear was admitting you were fearful. Another panel slid
open and another disc came spinning out, cutting through the air at a
simple pace. It fell to the ground and skidded along, just as all the
others had, coming to rest with barely a whisper. The light came first,
then the heat, then the force, then the sound. It was piercing light that
radiated off the walls and carved its way into Creed’s brains. It
was an explosive heat that singed his face and blasted at his body. It
was a tremendous force that lifted Creed into the air before throwing
him backward, his feet skidding against the ground. And it was a sound
that echoed through the room for many long, painful seconds afterward.
On the ground before them, the charred pieces of over twenty shattered
black discs crackled and smoked. But the room had done its job, and the
walls remained pristinely intact. Ororo picked herself
up off the floor, eyes wide, neatly tied hair now in disarray. Creed smiled
at her. “Good. Do it
again.” Robert
Drake knocked twice on the oak door in front of him, and waited for a
reply. Beside him, Laynia Petrovna coughed quietly into her hand, smoothly
trying to clear her throat. They stood on a simple concrete landing, a
crushed gravel path behind them which meandered through withered brown
grass. Sydney had been suffering from severe draught for most of the year,
with water rationing cutting deeply through the area. Even the wealthy,
such as the residents of the house the mutants were visiting, could do
little against the deadening heat. The worn man who opened
the door moved out of the way slowly, his reddened eyes dully looking
past Drake, his motion to come in barely a flick of the wrist. High arched
ceilings, well lit hallways, and a cool breeze met them within. Over the
songbirds that chirped away outside, and the rhythmic clicking of the
mutant’s boots, the sound of someone’s muffled weeping filtered
out to them. “Up the stairs,
to the left.” They found the boy
sleeping in his bed, snoring just a little bit. Whatever tranquilizers
the parents had fed him had knocked him out cold, and despite all that
had happened, there wasn’t a mark on the boy. Drake tried to remember
what his name was, what the circumstances had been surrounding his development.
The trigger had been a house party where the boy had been drinking and
trying to impress some girl. Only the girl’s boyfriend hadn’t
appreciated the sentiments and a fight had broken out. Authorities had
found the bodies, and the pieces of bodies, on two continents, and three
different oceans. Teleportation. If the boy had tried to run, they might
never have found him, never even come close. Drake wondered if the parents
realized that, and supposed they would have had to. Adopted parents. Never
even considered the possibility their little foundling hadn’t been
screened, and now it was far, far to late. Davis. That was the boy’s
name. Davis Something-Or-Other. Drake took a moment
to appreciate the colorful surfboards hanging on the walls, and the posters
of surfbabes hanging right beside them. The kid had taste, he had to give
him that. His eyes met Laynia’s for just a moment, long enough to
see her give him a little nod, and he turned back to the matter at hand.
A slender icepick formed in Drake’s hand, and he took a moment to
roll his shoulders, loosening up. Why did he always have to do the sleeping
ones? He didn’t mind terribly, but he was a little sick of carrying
everyone else’s weight through these things. A quick thrust jammed
the shard of ice into Davis Something-Or-Other’s temple, and abruptly
the snoring stopped. Rivulets of crimson blood started trickling down
the boy’s face, pooling there on the pillow, but that soon slowed
without a heart to pump it. Drake turned to his
teammate to see that she hadn’t even been watching, and had instead
chose to study the neon strobe light hanging in the corner. “That’s
it.”
“Halt
simulation,” Creed snapped. The flow of discs was cut off, and Victor
turned around slowly to get a good look at his charge. Ororo was covered
in grime and sweat, her breath came heavily, and she nearly collapsed
when Creed put an end to the exercise. “What’s the problem?” Ororo swayed there
for a moment, gaping at him as she struggled to stand upright, before
shaking her head to herself. “I’m confused.” Victor cocked his
head to the side and cast a look back to where an attendant was rushing,
for the third time, to clear up the littered debris covering the floor.
Ororo’s progress had been uneven, her mutation coming on in fits
and starts, and even then it was usually too wild to have the desired
effect. Along with the debris, a thin layer of snowflakes was also being
pushed to a side, and Victor’s breath was still steaming in the
cooled air. But as they had continued, the manifestations had actually
decreased in frequency and power, until Victor had been forced to call
it off. And it wasn’t exhaustion, either. He knew how to push people,
how to strain their outer limits and inner resources, and Ororo wasn’t
there yet. So what? “I say, you
do. Not complicated.” “You can control
it. What you do. So can the others. And you’re teaching me to.” “Ah.”
So that was it. This wasn’t the arena Victor had planned to answer
these questions in, but he had certainly known they were coming. They
almost always did. He bent down to scoop up a disc fragment which had
fallen at his feet, running the jagged edges along his fingers, waiting
for her to continue. “So why don’t
we teach everyone? Keep ‘em like Cassidy: drug them up until they’ve
got it down. Wouldn’t that be…” “What? Easier?
Simpler? More moral?” SHIELD should have hired someone to do this
sort of thing, instead of foisting it off on the team. Twice a month,
the panels would dissect their thoughts, their feelings, their actions,
and try to look for the little stress cracks that the pressure built.
But those were more like interrogations than counseling sessions, and
therapy took a back seat to preventing pandemic “What are we
then? What are they giving us?” “Oh,”
Victor smiled wide, letting her see his full range of animalistic fangs,
“We’re nukes, Ororo. Believe that.” He dropped the disc
fragment, lifted his arm, and tapped the thin metal bracelet that lay
there, “But they’ve got us handcuffed, with a big old shotgun
pointed at our heads. So we’re I their nukes.” She wasn’t convinced.
He could see it in her eyes, the way she stood with her head tilted in
that certain way. So maybe he sucked at giving the pep talks, and maybe
he wasn’t good at soothing a conscious. But he was realistic. No
one had ever said Victor was scared to look a thing straight in the eye,
no matter what it was. “It boils down
to this. We want you to save the world. But you’ve got to do some
truly disgusting shit to do it. You can say no. You might meet some high-minded
moralist who tells you it’s wrong. Fine. It’s Victor turned his
back on Ororo, half-wondering where that had all come from, and if it
any of it was going to stick. He hoped so. Victor didn’t want to
kill her. “Resume simulation.” “It
doesn’t bother you?” Drake looked out the jet window, down
at the distant rivers and hills. Laynia had been quiet for so long he
had almost forgotten she was there. That was, as much as Drake was capable
of forgetting a woman who looked like Laynia was there. “What?”
He turned to look at her, stretched out across her leather chair, her
legs dangling over the armrest, her hands resting behind her head. “The
job?” Laynia’s lips twisted in disgust before righting themselves
in a split second. Drake caught that second though, and filed it away
in the back of his mind, to recall another time. “Yeah. That.” “I
read,” Drake arched his back, trying to suppress an upcoming yawn,
“In the report, that three of the victims were teleported to Venezuela.
Or really, teleported 20,000 feet above Venezuela.” He
glanced back out the window, down at cars smaller than the old matchbox
toys, “How long do you think it takes to fall that far? What would
you do with the time?” When he looked back at Laynia her eyes were
distant, unfocused. “Should it bother me?” The Russian woman
pressed her palms against her forehead and pushed back across the sides
of her face, brushing blond hair off along the way. “What does bother
you then, Robert?” “Airline food.”
Laynia made a noise that could have been a laugh, or a hiccup. Drake wasn’t
sure, but decided to press along with the shtick anyway, hoping it would
eat up some time. “Oh, not the meal itself. I hate the crap they
package it in. It’s like frickin’ indestructible Teflon type
stuff. And it’s usually burning hot too.” She was definitely
smiling now, smiling at him, and Drake suddenly remembered how good it
felt to have someone do that. A mind could forget, sometimes. “Hot? That really
a problem for you?” “Hey, you’d
be pissed off too, if your fingers melted trying to get at your chicken
parmesan.” “My fingers?
Yeah, I would think so.” Now it was Drake smiling
as the conversation amiably died down. The silence that came after was
better than any he had felt in weeks, but still, preserving it just didn’t
feel right. He searched for something else to say, some little thing,
but kept coming up empty. Even after working together for so long, SHIELD
was not the sort of place that nurtured friendships -- or anything else
really. “What ever happened
to you and that Demetri guy?” It was a name and a face Drake barely
remembered at all, but the few times he could recall it, it had been connected
with Laynia. “Him? Transferred
out. Bigger and better things, I guess. He didn’t exactly say goodbye.”
Drake thought back
to his own Whiteground ‘romances’ and could only shrug in
reply. He wondered if he ever came up in their conversations. Probably
not. Sleeping with a mutant wasn’t exactly in vogue these days. “Oh. That’s
cold.” Laynia just looked back at him and arched a perfect blond
eyebrow, a wry smile forming. “What, to easy? Fine.” What passed for their
steward -- a heavy-set man with a graying beard and permanent scowl --
passed by them, not giving either one a second glance. “Huh. Time for
our noon feeding, I guess.” “Yeah. Don’t
melt your fingers, Bobby.” When
Elisabeth finally left Cassidy’s room she was deadly tired, and
deadly frustrated. Ororo was in the adjacent room, looking much the same.
How long she had been there, Elisabeth didn’t know. Was it day or
night? “They let you
in here?” Ororo looked up from the viewing window and simply nodded
at her. “Well then. Things must have gone well with you and Creed.” “Maybe. I guess.”
Ororo was hunched up, hugging her arms to her chest, looking lost inside
of her SHIELD jumpsuit. “How’d it go with him?” Elisabeth moved alongside
the other mutant and raised a hand against the window frame, pressing
against it. Cassidy lay beyond, his breathing slow and regular, his mind
finally released into the oblivion of true sleep. She remembered how happy
he looked standing in that meadow, letting the sunshine permeate through
him. She kept trying to force the image from her mind, but it kept creeping
back in, resolved to intrude on her thoughts. “Not good. His
mind… he knows things he doesn’t know, and thinks about things
he doesn’t think about. It’s all bundled up in there, somewhere.”
At least she thought it was, though Elisabeth couldn’t have been
sure. There had been more than once during the session that she had felt
completely out of her depth, in every meaningful facet of the game. “But
if I can’t get to him… they’ll use their own methods.” “Torture him?”
Elisabeth tried to read the other woman’s expression in the glass,
but the light wasn’t right for it, and she stopped trying. “Yes.” “Will that work?” “No.”
Elisabeth glanced back at the rest of the room, trying to distract herself
from the conversation. Someone had left a bottle of merlot sitting on
one of the white tables, with her name scrawled on an attached note. She’d
have to thank Sebastian tomorrow. “Where’s Shiro? Curled up
outside the door?” “If they can’t
get anything out of him. If they can’t use him for information,”
Ororo’s voice tripped for a moment before she plunged ahead, her
eyes locking on to Elisabeth’s. “They’re going to have
me kill “Yes. Probably.”
There it was, right in front of her. Had Ororo assumed she’d have
more time? Elisabeth hoped not. Going into SHIELD under any kind of misconception
was dangerous, maybe even deadly. The learning curve was about to get
a lot steeper for their newest recruit. “Come on, Ororo.
Let him sleep.” The two mutants turned
and left the room behind. The six guards posted by the door didn’t
even blink at them. Next
Issue: The full team goes into action. But will their newest
November 2006
MARVEL 2000 PRESENTS...
"MONSTERS IN US"
Written by
Mark Walsh
Creed
disasters. So now it was left to Victor Creed to explain to this young,
inexperienced woman why they had to kill their own kind. “Sure,
maybe. But it’s been tried. The Americans especially, after the
Super Soldier disaster. Why do you think so many emerged at once over
there? Can you imagine what it was like? They might as well have given
the public nukes, told everyone how to detonate them, then asked them
pretty please not to.”
wrong. Then there are over four billion people on this planet who need
you to do the wrong thing.”
him, aren’t they?”
member be an asset, or a liability?
