Gifted (21 page)

237
 

THE
first word out of Wolverine’s mouth was “Diplomatic.” The last word was “immunity.” In between those two words, however, a lengthy, florid string of profanity tumbled out of his mouth.

Colossus covered Kitty’s ears.

When Wolverine’s tirade finally ended, Fury said coolly, “You heard me, Tiny. And having heard, you walk away.”

Fury was conceivably the only person in the world who could address Wolverine as “Tiny” and live. But Wolverine remained in a feral crouch, his arms drawn back, ready to leap to the attack.

“Walk away?” said Emma. “Not bloody likely.”

“Play me straight, Fury,” said Wolverine. “This dink is a diplomat?”

The green-haired woman stepped forward, symbolically removing herself from Fury’s protection. “You don’t need that information,” she said imperiously.

Wolverine was unimpressed. “And you don’t need both those arms, Lettuce Locks.”

238
Fury chose to ignore the direct threat to the green-haired woman. “I’d like some answers myself,” he said, pointing toward Colossus. “For starters: Wasn’t that guy dead?”

Kitty frowned.
They didn’t know? They
had
to know. Is Fury screwing with us now?
“He was here,” she said, fighting to keep her anger in check. “Here being tortured. Being tested by Ord like an animal so you could design your cure.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Fury said.

“Oh, right, nobody knows anything,” said Kitty. She looked toward Rao. “And you? You still claiming that you were in the dark about that?”

“Absolutely,” said Rao. “I would never condone—”

“Your lies are getting less convincing with repetition,” said Emma. “Fury, you’re clearly in bed with this alien berk, yet you’ve no clue what he’s been up to? Doesn’t sound like you, great big covert muckity and all that.”

A moment passed.

I would not want to play poker with this man
, Emma’s thoughts informed the others.
He is seriously brassed off, that much is obvious. But I don’t know whether he really doesn’t know what’s going on, or if he’s just irritated that we’re on to him
.

So what’s his play
, thought Wolverine.

He’ll probably try an end run. Try to deny—

“How do you know your ‘Colossus’ is the genuine article in the first place?” said Fury.

And there it is
, Emma commented wryly as she said aloud, “I read his mind.”

239
“I matched his DNA,” said the Beast.

“I smelled him,” said Wolverine.

Beast nodded. “I also did that.”

“This,” said Kitty forcefully, “is Peter Nikolaievitch Rasputin. And you owe him the goddamn truth.”

Fury’s expression never changed, never so much as flinched. But there was a growing anger in his single visible eye.

“Agent Brand?” Fury said, very softly, very dangerously.

The green-haired woman turned and looked with irritation at Fury. At least Kitty supposed it was irritation. The glasses made her eyes impossible to read. “You don’t have the authorization to make me divulge classified—”

“Yeah? What I
do
got is the urge to disappear and leave this dink,” and he inclined his head toward Ord’s unconscious form, “at the mercy of these very unreasonable super-powered types. Tell them the truth, Brand. It ain’t like they’re gonna like it, and it’s the only option you got if you want this nimrod alive. Because I’ll tell ya what: I dunno for sure that the Commie over there—no offense—”

“None taken, capitalist lackey.”

Fury paused. “God, I miss the Cold War,” he said wistfully. “Where was I? I dunno if he’s got what it takes to off your boy Ord in cold blood. He’s pissed now, but from the look of him, I’m thinking he won’t, if for no other reason than it’ll damage him in the eyes of the little lady over there. Right?” Before Kitty could say anything, he continued, “On the other hand, I’ve known Wolverine more years than either of us would admit. And Wolverine, well…he’d gut him like a trout without a second thought. Am I right, Logan?”

240
“Actually, I wouldn’t give it a first thought.”

Fury gestured toward Emma and Cyclops. “And I wouldn’t count on Frosty the Snow Queen to stop him. Laser Gazer might, but—”

“I’m feeling faint,” Cyclops said humorlessly. “I could pass out at any time, and God knows
what
could happen while I’m unconscious.”

“Right, so…your call, Agent Brand. Make your peace with it, or they’ll make their pieces with him.”

There was a long moment of silence. Then Brand turned to face the assembled X-Men. “I’m Special Agent Abigail Brand. I head the Sentient Worlds Observation and Response Department. We work with S.H.I.E.L.D. and handle matters extraterrestrial.”

Beast ran the name through his head. “Sentient Worlds Obser—S.W.O.R.D.? And S.H.I.E.L.D. The government and their acronyms…honestly, it’s adorable.”

“I didn’t pick the name.” Brand paced back and forth, a couple steps one way, a couple the other, as if she were delivering a briefing—which, to all intents and purposes, she was. “The thing is, S.H.I.E.L.D. has its hands full trying to keep
this
world together. And
somebody
has to keep track of the others.”

“So funding terrorists isn’t just for earthlings anymore?” Cyclops did not appear impressed by her mission statement. “We selling arms to the Skrulls, too?”

“What we’re doing, Mister Summers, is trying to prevent a war. We’re—”

“Uh-oh,” Wolverine said abruptly, and the hackles went up on the back of the Beast’s neck as he growled low in his throat.

“What is it?” said Fury. The rest of the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents looked around, uncertain.

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Then they heard the noises. The shouts, the sounds of pounding feet, echoing so it was impossible to be sure where they were coming from.

“Perimeter team, report!” Fury snapped, and waited to hear a response on his ear piece. Nothing came. “Perimeter team, this is Fury! Anything ya care to share with us—?”

Then a mob of rampaging mutants came charging in through the hole that Ord had created when he made his entrance.

“Where is it! Where’s the cure!”
a bizarre grotesque of a mutant was shouting. His face was in his gut and he had no head, and there were more behind him, lots more.
“You can’t take it away from us!”

“The government!”
another mutant shouted, pointing at Fury.
“The government is going to take the cure away!”

“
Hold your fire!”
Fury shouted. “These are
civilians!
”

Like a ghostly personification of every mutant who had ever been wronged, a floating blue girl descended on the Beast. He had the strange feeling she was drawn to him because she sensed the uncertainty within him. “No more waiting,” she said, her voice airy, seemingly hardly there, as ephemeral as she was herself. “
No more waiting…need body…whole body…need be human
.” The Beast was shaken, as if he’d seen all of his inner concerns and confusions personified in front of him. As if he was being haunted by his own soul.

FURY
noticed the X-Men were doing nothing to impede the mutants. Instead the X-Men had flattened against what was left of the walls, trying to stay out of the way, as the mutants overran the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents. It made him wonder if the two groups were in cahoots somehow.

242
Several mutants converged on Doctor Rao, demanding the cure. “I can’t,” she cried out. “It isn’t fully tested yet!”

Clearly they didn’t care. Several of them grabbed Rao, started shaking her. The Beast tried to get to her, but there were too many people between them. S.H.I.E.L.D. agents fired tasers at Rao’s assailants; two mutants went down, and then the agents made the mistake of trying to taser a large one with a rocky hide. Not only did the electricity bounce off him, but his large hand stabbed forward, grabbed the nearest gun, and broke it in half—to the shock of the disarmed S.H.I.E.L.D. agent.

Fury found himself surrounded by seven identical dwarfs—apparently one mutant who had replicated six duplicates of himself. None of the dwarfs seemed remotely happy. Fury glanced around, trying to get a line on where the X-Men were. There was no sign of them. They’d slipped away in the chaos.

Then a report crackled over his headset:
“Sir! We’ve had a perimeter breach on the southwest corner!”

“Really? That’s good to know.”

“It’s a full scale riot, sir! The mutants who were lined up outside, they attacked when they saw us! They assumed we—”

“Yeah, I figured it out, Captain Obvious.” Call in the Sandmen, put ’em to sleep, and then demote yourself to
crossing guard!
”

THE
crush of mutants carried the battle into and down the adjoining corridor. Special Agent Brand was going with the flow, seeing no advantage to slugging it out with a bunch of invading mutants.
243
This was not her problem. Her problem was getting Ord to—

Suddenly she stopped.

She ran back into the lab to make sure Ord had been secured. He’d been lying unconscious on the floor, and she couldn’t take the chance that—

Brand skidded to a halt. There was a large dent in the floor where Ord had been. The fight had moved out of the room, and apparently so had Ord.

She ran into the adjoining lab, through the hole in the wall. There was no sign of him. She tapped her headset, but could barely hear herself think over the insanity in the hallway. “We need agents up in research right now! Ord is loose and very unstable—!”

Suddenly she began to sink.

For an instant she thought perhaps she was passing out. Then she realized that, no, she really was sinking, as if the floor had transformed into quicksand. She looked down to see a slender female hand clamped onto her ankle, and she had just enough time to think,
Oh, that little
—before her entire body passed right through the floor.

She was hauled down, down, everything spinning around her so fast that she couldn’t get her bearings. Then abruptly she was yanked sideways. In the darkness of passing walls and insubstantial floors, she caught a brief glimpse of Kitty Pryde’s back. She was pulling Brand along by the ankle like a balloon in the Macy’s Thanksgiving parade.

Then suddenly Brand felt a chill and realized she was outside. She hung in the air for a moment, like the Coyote becoming vulnerable to gravity upon realizing he’d run off the edge of a cliff. Then she materialized, dropped, and landed with a jarring thud on the ground, knocking
244
the wind out of her. Fortunately, the drop was only a couple of feet.

She felt her stomach muscles squeeze and, even though she tried to avoid it, she couldn’t. She knelt on her hands and knees and dry-heaved like a drunk, thanking providence she had forgotten to eat that day aside from a couple of protein bars. When the wave of nausea finally passed, she shook it off and looked up.

The X-Men surrounded her. Kitty Pryde, who had led her on the disorienting trip, was looking particularly smug. The dragon she called Lockheed was sitting serenely on her shoulder. The others were staring down at her.

“Hi,” said Kitty. “Remember us?”

245
 

TILDIE.

It was the only thought going through Kavita Rao’s mind as she sprinted through the hallways of Benetech. The sounds of battle, the shouting, all of it receded into the distance. The only thing that mattered was making sure Tildie was all right.

Despite all her efforts to help mutants anxious to leave their disease behind, she had never felt quite so terrified as she had when they stormed Benetech. Their desperation was palpable, and that desperation had flipped over into anger and frustration that was worse than anything she had ever imagined.

I announced it too early. I wanted to give them hope that a cure was coming. So many of them felt no miracle would ever occur…that they’d be trapped in their misshapen states forever and might even end their existence because they could no longer tolerate it…I wanted them to know help was on the horizon. I wanted to save lives. Instead I’ve driven them into a frenzy with desire for the cure
.

I have to keep them away from Tildie. God only knows what they’d do
246
if they found her. What if…what if one of them has some sort of vampiric abilities, and just…just sucks her dry, thinking her blood is the key? Anything could happen if they get to her
.

The observation room where Tildie resided at Benetech had a lockdown mode that would turn it into the equivalent of a panic room. But there was no guarantee it had been activated. In fact, it was possible that the X-Men had inadvertently taken it off-line during their entry, which meant it would have to be activated manually by one of the few people in the company who knew the codes.

Such as Rao herself.

The S.H.I.E.L.D. agents had managed to pull her out from under the pileup of mutants surrounding her. “Don’t hurt them!” she had said as they extracted her, shoving the mutants to either side.

“Get out of here!” one of the agents had said. “We can’t guarantee your safety!”

She had been about to offer protest, but then she thought of Tildie. With that, all other concerns had vanished, and she had sprinted down the hallways, through the corridors, to the observation room.

In her mind’s eye, she could see Tildie there, up until all hours as she frequently was. Oftentimes Tildie would have a late-night tea party to entertain her stuffed toys. It was such a pleasant display of normality that it gave Rao hope that someday the child could grow up into a life not haunted by dreams or nightmares. Granted, the reason Tildie often displayed behavior bordering on insomnia was because she tried to put off going to sleep for as long as possible, since the prospect of slumber held its own terrors. Ideally, though, all would be well with her eventually, and this terrible past truly would be past.

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As Rao neared the observation room, she was alarmed to hear a thunderous crash and a massive shattering of glass. Instantly she knew what it was. Someone had smashed in the observation window.

She shoved open the door into the observation room and, sure enough, the glass was lying in a million shards. All during the experiments, Tildie had remained blissfully unaware that she was being watched through the window; she’d just thought it to be a big mirror.

Rao could also tell at a quick glance that all the records had been taken. The various file folders, the test results, all of it. The computer screen was blank save for error messages that indicated all the hard drives had been wiped, the files either destroyed or transferred and then deleted.

Rao moved to the large empty space the glass had occupied, and gaped through it in horror.

Ord was in the room with Tildie. The table with her tea party had been knocked over, and Ord was holding Tildie up like a football, with one hand clamped over her mouth. He was so strong that her struggles were utterly futile.

“Put her down!” Rao shouted.

Ord barely afforded her a glance. There was nothing but fury in his face. “If I can’t conduct tests on Colossus, then I’ll conduct them on her. And if they can’t be done here, then they’ll be held elsewhere.
Retrieval
.”

The moment he said that last word, a large bracelet on his wrist began to glow. Tildie’s eyes were wide with terror. Seconds later, a silvery glow surrounded him and then he was gone, along with Tildie. It was some manner of transport fail-safe.

“Oh God,” Rao whispered.

248
It was as if Tildie’s nightmares-made-into-reality had returned, except this time around, the nightmare was not something conjured out of the girl’s own head. Instead it was a devil spat up from Hell, and Kavita Rao had made a deal with it.

Rao stared at Tildie’s toys, upended and lying in an accusatory fashion on the floor.

Then she turned and bolted.

THE
X-Men stood a safe distance from the insanity being unleashed upon Benetech, under a grove of trees that blocked them from easy view of low-flying S.H.I.E.L.D. vehicles. Anyone on the ground who happened to glance their way didn’t see them; a simple mental deflection from Emma was enough to guarantee that.

In the distance, the X-Men could see masses of mutants still pouring in through the breach they’d created in the side of the building. A half dozen small ships—one-man S.H.I.E.L.D. vessels—were dive-bombing down toward them. The mutants had crashed in through the first floor in the southwest corner and spread throughout the facility in no time at all. Fortunately, the building seemed in no danger of collapsing; otherwise hundreds of people already inside would be crushed.

There was no sign of Nick Fury. Obviously he was still inside the building, although there was little doubt that he was responsible for calling in the air strike.

The newly arrived S.H.I.E.L.D. vessels targeted those mutants who were still trying to gain entry. Huge blasts of gas hammered away at the mob as if the ships were crop dusters. This was far more potent
249
gas than any the X-Men had ever seen before. The moment it hit the ground, anyone within range simply keeled over immediately. No coughing or gasping or staggering; just down they went.

Cyclops’ gut impulse was to open fire on the ships, just blast them out of the sky. But the X-Men were hardly in a position to start a full-blown firefight with S.H.I.E.L.D.

For just a moment, as Cyclops watched the desperate mutants being felled by the S.H.I.E.L.D. sleeper ships, he suddenly remembered what it was like to see a world through something other than a ruby-quartz visor. He remembered colors, and the feel of the wind on his face, and having to squint in sunlight. And crying. He remembered crying. He remembered when his eyes had first turned into weapons of mass destruction. If this cure had been around when he’d undergone that transformation, how likely was it that he would have been standing at the front of the line waiting for his dose?

Likely. Damned likely.

The X-Men had always been symbols of what people could accomplish when they were forced to adjust to strange, new abilities. But if there was a new reality where mutants didn’t
have
to adjust…

…why should they be
forced
to?

Symbols were all well and good, but all the X-Men were—all they
really
were—were examples of what mutants could be if they chose to live their lives
as
mutants. Rather than allow themselves to be beaten down by society, mutants could band together and create a world where they lived in solidarity with each other and drew strength from that. A strength that would enable them to survive long enough for society to realize that mutants were simply different, not enemies.

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But that was only true if there was no alternative. Rao’s ‘miracle’ was providing exactly that, and who were the X-Men…who was
anyone
…to make that decision on behalf of others?

You’ve known so much misery, so much heartache in your life, with this genetic burden that was thrust upon you. Where do you get off sitting in judgment on other people’s pursuit of happiness? You’re opposed to the government forcing people to take this cure…but if you’re working to deprive people of it when they really want it, how are you any better? In what kind of world do you get to seize the moral high ground?

“A world of trouble. That’s what you people are in. A
world
of trouble,” said Agent Brand, jolting Cyclops harshly from his mental digression.

His stoicism remained intact. Long years of suppressing emotion enabled him to keep his face impassive. “Well, that’s the world we’re from,” he said drily. “Finish your story, Agent Brand.”

Her sunglasses had fallen off when she hit the ground. She hadn’t bothered to pick them up, and he noticed her eyes were as green as her hair. “Genocide. ‘
And they all died suddenly after
. The end.’ You like it?”

“My kind of party,” said Wolverine.

“Are you remotely under the impression that I’m kidding, little man?” she said. “The Breakworld’s technologies include something that translates roughly as ‘Timeshadows.’ They can see a partial version of the future. Not visit. Not change. Just see.”

“And they saw something of interest to us?” said Cyclops.

She nodded. “They saw their world in chaos. In ashes. The Breakworld, gone in their lifetimes. Destroyed utterly. By a mutant. Most probably an X-Man.”

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Wolverine stepped forward, grabbed her by the front of her uniform and hauled her to her feet. “So you got together and decided to take care of the muties once and for all, huh?”

“Don’t you get it? To Ord,
he’s
the hero fighting to save his world. You people are the enemy. He’s the X-Man to your Magneto.”

“Magneto said people will always look for reasons to destroy mutants.” Wolverine’s fists curled even more tightly around the top of her uniform. “So far you ain’t shown me anything to prove he got it wrong.”

“Deal with the facts, Bumblebee. Our own precog stats confirmed Ord’s findings,” said Brand, undaunted by the angry mutant. “A mutant will almost certainly destroy the Breakworld in the next three years.”

“And what do we know of this Breakworld?” said Emma. “Have you seen it yourself?”

“No. But it has a quarter of a billion people living on it. It celebrates the arts, scientific discovery, philosophy—”

“And the one representative of this paradise that you’ve encountered firsthand,” the Beast pointed out, “is a bellicose madman who’s armed to the teeth. Even allowing for the possibility that what you’re saying is true…have you considered the notion that Breakworld’s alleged destruction will result from their own endeavors? Perhaps they’re a race of conquerors that targets Earth and a mutant winds up saving our world…
again
. Did you give any thought to that possibility? Or did your own personal dislike of mutants make it simple for you to decide whose side you’re on?”

“My feelings toward mutants, one way or the other, are not at issue,” she said stiffly. “Although I’m curious: When your teammate,
252
Jean Grey, went berserk and destroyed an entire alien world a few years back, what rationalization did you come up with to excuse that?”

“Jean Grey is dead, Agent Brand,” Emma said, with a sense of finality that indicated that, as far as she was concerned, that subject was closed.

Yet Brand, who smirked at the words, wasn’t about to let it go. “Yeah, that’ll last,” she said and looked toward Peter Rasputin.

Immediately Kitty was between them. Brand flinched slightly; clearly she had no desire to experience the literally gut-wrenching sensation of another Kitty Pryde-sponsored architectural tour. “You have a hell of a nerve,” said Kitty sharply, “holding up Peter’s resurrection as an example of anything other than your pal Ord’s sheer cruelty. Ord brought Peter back to life and then spent God knows how long torturing him.
Ord
is the one using
us
for lab rats. Did you know?” and her voice became accusatory. “Did you know what he was doing to Peter? All this time, did you know? Give me a damned straight answer.”

Brand didn’t attempt to dissemble. “Yes. But Fury didn’t. Not his department.”

“What about Kavita?” asked Beast.

“Ord came here with a declaration of
war
, people,” said Brand. “The cure was just diplomatic tap dancing until we could get a bead on which mutant was—”

The Beast was not so easily put off. “Please answer my question. In case it’s slipped your mind: Was Doctor Rao aware that you were—”

“
Please!”

The shouted plea had come from Doctor Rao, sprinting across the lawn toward them. The moment she had their attention, she skidded to
253
a halt. She was gasping for air, her hand to her chest, trying to compose herself. “He’s got Tildie,” she managed to get out.

“The kid?” said Wolverine. Rao nodded. “And I s’pose we don’t gotta ask who the ‘he’ is.”

Again she nodded. “He’s taken everything. The samples, the research. He’s gone below and I…if Tildie’s hurt…”

“Why below?” said Cyclops. “What’s below?”

Kitty was able to supply the answer immediately. “A subcomplex. His lab.”