Gifted (5 page)

And every single person who died would do so for one reason and one reason only. Because the two people in the bed, who were trying desperately to lose themselves in each other, hadn’t managed to get the job done, had failed to prepare the students for what they were going to face. The deaths of those young people, whether it came in one year or five or fifty, would result because Scott and Emma and the other teachers hadn’t been good enough.

This awareness of a future speeding toward them like a freight train was something they carried with them every hour of every day. But if they could escape the nightmares that dogged their heels for even a moment, that would make this a good night. A very good night.

45
 

LITTLE Tildie Soames is having a terrible night.

Her parents have been arguing loudly for the past half hour, very loudly, saying all those words that Tildie knew she wasn’t supposed to say. Things were broken, and her mother just stormed upstairs declaring she was going to bed because she had a migraine. And that loud argument has sunk into Tildie’s dreaming mind, raising Cain and far worse things than that.

Her dreams are haunting her, terrible creatures moving through them, huge awful things with knives for teeth and saws for fingers and six eyes, or at least she thinks they’re eyes, oozing something that looks like a combination of blood and pus. They are banging against the door of her closet, and even though they have not yet emerged she knows exactly what they look like because they are her nightmares, her own night terrors made manifest.

In her dreamlike state, walking that borderline where the separation of reality from fantasy is at its thinnest, she clambers out of bed. Her bare feet touch the hardwood floor and it’s cold, so cold, and she
46
pads across it and out into the hallway toward the safety of the only place she can think of where monsters would not dare to follow.

Her parents’ bedroom door is partly open, which means she can go in. She knows better than to try to do so when it’s closed because the last time she did that her parents were all tumbling in the sheets and breathing hard, and they yelled at her and she didn’t like it at all.

Her mother is lying there, and Tildie clambers into bed with her. Mother’s wearing a flannel nightgown. Tildie puts her body up against her, taking solace in the feel of the flannel and the warmth of her mother, the security of her steady breathing, her bosom raising up and down rhythmically.

The monster cannot attack her here
.

And she hears the closet door burst open from down the hallway.

Her spine stiffens; her sphincter tightens. She stops breathing.

The monster could not possibly know where I am
.

It’s approaching, its claws clicking on the hallway floor.

The monster would not dare come in here
.

The bedroom door bangs open, and Mommy, startled by the noise, sits up, looking confused, caught in that same place of half-awake/half-asleep that has Tildie in its clutches. “What the—?” The words sound thick like syrup, and suddenly Mommy screams and clutches Tildie to herself protectively, and she screams again and the monster charges forward, grabbing at Tildie, yanking her out of her mother’s grasp. It pulls Tildie into it, and it’s only at that moment Tildie realizes the monster is a she, a female, a mother itself, and it wants Tildie for its very own. It shoves Tildie into its body and Tildie is floating in the air, a part of it now, trapped, and
47
her mother screams inarticulately, lunging for it. Mommy is screaming and Tildie is sharing the monster’s thoughts, and the monster is thinking, “Her screams are yummy.” And the monster reaches out and grabs her mother by either arm and starts to pull, and suddenly Tildie is back in the schoolyard, watching that icky Hunter Jenkins plucking the wings off a writhing fly, and Tildie’s mother has time for just one shriek before her body is ripped in half, right down the middle. Blood is everywhere, on the bed, on the wall, on the tongue of the monster that savors it, on everything except Tildie herself who continues to float helplessly, and Tildie is screaming but her screams are muffled by the monster.

Her father is at the door, fully dressed in his day clothes, shouting things like “What the hell is going on up here? Did you drag Tildie into this?” She tries to yell, tries to tell her father to run, but he stands there paralyzed, his eyes wide with horror, and the monster goes for him, grabs him, guts him, the blades going into him so easily, like knives slicing into butter, and her daddy stares down at what’s seeping from his gut, trying desperately to shove pink tubes and other stuff back into where it’s supposed to go. He sags to his knees and there’s gurgling sounds coming from his mouth, which the monster doesn’t seem to like all that much, so the monster picks him up and slams him against the wall to stop him from gurgling.

Then come the red lights that flood the room, the red lights that she doesn’t understand, and there are two more men at the door, policemen. Policemen are her friends. She knows this because one of them came to school a few months ago and told them
48
so. He’d had a bright, shiny badge and a dog, and a gun in his holster that he wouldn’t remove so the boys could see it, no matter how much they begged him to.

There is no dog now and she can see the guns clearly, both pointed at her, and the monster lashes out with its free hand (its other hand is still buried in Daddy’s chest) and drives its fist straight through the chest of the nearest policeman. It lifts him clear off his feet, pinning him against the wall like a butterfly, and the second policeman’s hands are trembling as he fires his gun, and the bullet is coming right at her and she’s going to die she’s going to—

“Veeda!”
she cried.

Tildie jerked awake, her short brown hair hanging in front of her eyes, covering the narrow scar on her forehead. Her nightgown was plastered on her sweating body. She was shaking uncontrollably, the images she’d just seen glued to the insides of her eyeballs. The small bedroom that had become the be-all and end-all of her world was dark, and in the darkness she was sure, she was absolutely positive, that the monsters were lurking again. They had enfolded her into themselves, or itself, or however many selves they were, and had—as a consequence—taken up permanent residence within her, waiting for their moment to escape and wreak more havoc. “Veeda!” she screamed again, and then the room was suddenly filled with light.

It was not a particularly large room. The walls were pink, and there was a single dresser that was nevertheless large enough to contain all her clothes, save for the blood-soaked nightgown she hadn’t seen since That Night (It had been analyzed thread by thread and was now in a plastic bag safely tucked away in a locker she would never see.) And
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there was that large mirror on the other side of the room. She’d never seen a mirror quite so large and didn’t understand the need for it, but otherwise she didn’t give it any thought.

Veeda stood framed in the doorway. Veeda was the only person she ever saw these days. Veeda, with her brown skin and that pretty red dot on her forehead, was also the only person she cared about, because Veeda cared about her. Veeda had, through no means Tildie understood, taken her away from the dark cell and the scary people who had put her there and who had treated her like
she
was the nightmare that everyone should be afraid of.

“Tildie, sweetie, I’m right here.” Her voice had that strange accent, but it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered except that Veeda was where she needed her to be.

“It came back!” Tildie cried out. “I saw it! I felt it! I—”

Veeda sat on the edge of the bed and took the child into her arms. “It was just a dream, Tildie,” she said soothingly.

Tildie clutched at the fabric of Veeda’s white lab coat. It was just like the coat Tildie’s pediatrician had worn, back when Tildie had had a pediatrician and a mother to take her to him. Veeda wore it for the same reason: She was a doctor. That was all Tildie had needed to hear when they’d first met. Everyone knew doctors made you better, and if Veeda could make her better, that was all Tildie wanted.

“I don’t have ‘just dreams,’” Tildie whispered, her voice as ominous as any child’s could be.

“Yes. You do. Now you do, just like anybody else.”

“I don’t want it to come back.” She glanced around nervously, as if worried “it” might hear her.

“It never will, Tildie,” Veeda assured her. “It never will.”

50
DOCTOR
Kavita Rao remained with Tildie, cradling Tildie’s head on her shoulder until the child drifted back into what Rao could only pray would be a dreamless sleep. Then she eased the girl back down onto the pillow. She didn’t turn the lights out immediately, though. Instead she remained there, watching the child, making sure there was no repetition of the episode before finally shutting off the lights and closing the door.

She then came around to the observation room. Her “associate” was standing there waiting for her, staring through the one-way mirror that allowed the girl to be observed without knowing it was happening.

“When was the last time you went home and got a good night’s sleep?” he rumbled. In some ways he was no less disconcerting than he had been the night he had first come to her.

“A lifetime ago,” she said, rubbing the fatigue from her eyes. She’d been monitoring all of Tildie’s vitals during the girl’s slumber and, to her shame, had drifted off, awakened by Tildie’s scream. Fortunately enough they didn’t have to do anything as intrusive as taping wires to the child to keep track of what was going on in her mind and body. The monitoring systems had been built into the bed.

He glanced toward the slumbering girl. “How bad was it?”

“Her REM sleep, you mean? As bad as it gets. Her brain activity was off the charts.”

“So there is every reason to believe it was identical to the dreams that caused the manifestations resulting in the termination of her parents’ lives.”

She stared at him. “I wouldn’t have put it quite that clinically, but yes. Based on what she told me—and I have no reason to think she was lying—she was experiencing the exact same dreams that killed her parents and the police officer.”

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Her associate sniffed disdainfully. “The parents I could understand, but there was no excuse for the policeman. He was armed and a warrior. He had no business being killed by a girl’s dream manifestations.”

“I’m sorry not everyone can be on a par with you,” she said.

“It is not your fault, and thus you have no reason to apologize.”

There seemed no point in explaining concepts such as sarcasm to him. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. So,” he said briskly, “if her nightmares were going to manifest in any way, they would have done so during this incident.”

“Yes, absolutely.” She checked over the instruments. “But there was nothing. No psychokinetic manifestations at all. Her tank, so to speak, is empty. By every possible scientific measure, she’s free of it.” She took a moment to process the fact, closing her eyes, breathing deeply, letting it out. Tears stung at the corners of her eyes, an uncharacteristically emotional response to the assessment of scientific data. “She’s free of it,” she said again.

“In that case, Doctor,” he said, “I believe it’s time you told the world, so that others know there is hope for them at last.”

“Yes. Hope. That’s exactly right. I’ll make the arrangements.” Then she paused and looked up at him tentatively. “Are you going to be there? Make your presence known? I could not have done it without you.”

“Remember our agreement, Doctor. Insofar as the world knows, that is in fact exactly what you did. I will not have it any other way. And besides,” and what passed for a smile played across his lips, “when you’re having your press conference, I have plans to be…elsewhere.”

“Do I want to know where?”

“I think it wiser that you do not.”

She took him at his word.

52
 

THE
gentle rays of the morning sun filtered through the bedroom window. Emma was just beginning to awaken, but she had not yet opened her eyes. It was her experience that the moment she opened her eyes was typically the point at which the day began to head downhill. So she remained where she was, her right arm draped over the bare chest of the sleeping Scott Summers.

The sheets were twisted around her. This told her that Scott had had a restless night, which never boded well. It told her that Scott had had a lot of dreams, and he wasn’t someone who could typically shake them off come morning light. They usually wound up having an impact on the rest of the day, making him brood even more than usual.

Please don’t let it be about
her.

That was Emma’s greatest fear. She knew perfectly well that yesterday had been the fifth anniversary of Jean Grey’s death. Scott’s great lost love, the red-haired, telepathic bint that he had been devoted to since practically the first day she’d walked into the school as a callow teenager. The woman he had loved, and married, and lost.

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Scott had said nothing about it, though. Hadn’t waxed nostalgic for her, hadn’t stood longingly in front of her portrait that hung there in the den, a constant reminder of her absence. Emma wondered if it was possible that he’d forgotten. That would have been nice, a sign that he was finally,
finally
, moving on. Not being rooted in the past was the only way they, Emma and Scott, could have a hope of proceeding into a real future.

At least he hadn’t woken up shouting Jean’s name or something hopelessly melodramatic like that. Maybe he’d just had dreams of walking into a test unprepared, or standing on stage naked in the middle of a play he hadn’t rehearsed for and didn’t know any of the lines. Nice, mundane stuff like that, which wouldn’t have any impact on his mood.

It would be really nice if this were a good day for once.

And then a rough, growling voice shattered any hope of that.

“So tell me…”

Emma immediately sat up. Scott was instantly jolted awake, the glow behind his visor snapping on like a refrigerator light. A lethal, highly concussive refrigerator light.

Wolverine was perched on the footboard of the bed, the sun coming up behind him as if it were anxious to try to get a good view of what was going on. His feet were bare, enabling him to balance. His shirt hung open, revealing his hirsute chest. Alcohol rolled off his breath in waves; he smelled like he’d consumed an entire distillery.

“…which stage of grieving is this?” said Wolverine. “Denial?”

I’m going to kill him
, thought Emma.

Scott, as it happened, was way ahead of her. His visor snapped
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open and a blast of pure crimson force erupted from his head. It slammed into Logan before he could move…

No
, Emma thought.
Nothing happens before he can move. He wanted to get hit. He wanted to fight…or maybe he just wants to be punished because he wasn’t able to save
her…

…and sent Logan hurtling backwards. The glass in the window exploded outward as he soared through the air and landed heavily on the back lawn.

“Scott!” shouted Emma, but he was already gone, out the bedroom door. She heard his feet seconds later, pounding down the stairs. It was a damned good thing he was wearing pajama pants. If he’d been sleeping in the nude, the students would have gotten one hell of a show.

The students
.

She closed her eyes in pain. Terrific. This was going to be a great start to the day.

Emma shifted her attention back out to the lawn, where Wolverine was bounding to his feet as Scott charged to confront him. She didn’t have to listen in through their minds; their voices were carrying across the lawn.

“Strike a nerve, Summers?” said Wolverine. His claws snapped out from his fists with their customary, unique
snikt
sound. “What happened? Emma Frost do a conscience-ectomy on ya?”

“This is good,” Scott retorted. “The guy who tried to steal my wife since the day he met us is gonna tell me all about what’s
proper
.”

Wolverine grinned lopsidedly. “Only reason Jean and you stayed together at all is she was too strong to give in to what she really wanted…and you were too scared.”

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“Hey Logan,” said Scott as he reached for the side of his visor, “that healing power’s about to come in really handy.”

Wolverine leaped straight up to avoid the blast he knew was coming at him, but Scott knew Wolverine’s moves too well. He aimed his blast not at where Wolverine was, but where he knew the angry mutant was going to be. The crimson beam struck Logan broadside and sent him flying a half-mile into a thicket of large oak trees.

There was no movement for a long moment, and then leaves started flying everywhere. Wolverine was cutting his way out of the tangle of branches so he could get at Scott.

To hell with them. I hope they kill each other
, Emma thought. And she was only partly joking.

HANK
McCoy, whose suite of offices was directly across the hall from Scott and Emma’s, ran into the bedroom to see what was going on, unceremoniously clad only in an undershirt and boxers. He stopped short, staring at the shattered window and at Emma, who wore a white negligee with nothing under it. Quickly, out of a sense of decorum, he averted his eyes as Emma said drily, “Good morning, Henry. I see everyone’s getting the day off to an early start.”

He crossed quickly toward the window and stared out. Scott was standing in the middle of the lawn. A flood of students were pouring out, with what looked to be Kitty Pryde leading the pack. In the distance, there appeared to be some sort of mutant leaf blower trapped in a grove of trees, doing its best to denude the upper branches of Hank’s favorite oak. When Wolverine leapt out and started toward Scott, all became clear.

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Except not really.

“What’s this all about?” Hank asked.

“What do you think?” Emma said. She was trying to sound indifferent, but the bitterness in her voice was unmistakable. “Super-powers, a scintillating wit, and the best body money can buy…and I still rate below a corpse.”

Then
it became truly clear.

Hank McCoy couldn’t remember the last time, if ever, that he had actually felt sorry for Emma Frost. He tried to find the words to say, but hadn’t a clue what they would be.

“I don’t need your pity,” Emma said. “What I need right now is a shower. I suddenly feel unclean.”

She walked into the bathroom, and as the door clicked shut, Hank returned his attention to the battle outside. At that moment he didn’t know whether to go to the bathroom door and offer words of consolation…or go out and try to settle this stupidity down before someone got hurt…or just go nuke some popcorn, kick back and watch the show.

SCOTT’S
fists were trembling with rage as he saw Wolverine heading toward him again.

The little bastard. Did he really think I’d forgotten about Jean? Did he really think she’s ever far from my thoughts? That I’m not haunted by her? This isn’t about me at all. This is about him trying to “prove” that he loved her more than I did. That he can’t do anything but drink to kill the pain while I’m busy trying to run a school and prepare young people for their danger-filled lives. He’s trying to show me up, just like he’s done from
57
day one, and even though Jean’s gone five years, he’s
still
trying to impress her, to…

There was a loud clearing of a female throat.

Scott turned and saw Kitty standing there, her arms folded across the extra-large pink hockey jersey she wore. She was scowling fiercely, disapproval on her face. Other students had followed her out, gaping at the display in front of them.

Scott felt the weight of their stares upon him. Any number of times in the past, he’d squared off with Logan about something or other…usually the same thing. But most times either they’d been alone, or else there had been other members of the team present, trying to get between them…

The team
.

Those two words exploded in Scott’s mind with the same intensity of light as his eye beams. They reminded him of various thoughts that had been rattling around in his head lately. An unease, a frustration that had been growing daily, a conviction that the X-Men might be going in the wrong direction. That they had the potential to accomplish so much, and none of that potential was being tapped.

The words reminded him of what he truly had in mind for the current faculty, and he felt annoyed that he had allowed himself to be so easily distracted from his true objectives. Mentally he kicked himself…

His head whipped around. Wolverine was upon him. Scott had been so lost in thought that he had lost track of Logan.

His reflexes, honed by thousands of battles, served him well. A heartbeat before Wolverine’s claws reached him, he fired off another blast. Wolverine had been leaping toward him in an arc; the beam
58
caught him at its apex, blasting the tattered remains of his shirt right off him. Wolverine spiraled through the air and hit the ground.

“We’re done,” said Scott crisply.

“Oh, no we ain’t.” Wolverine got to his feet. He was unsteady, but Scott knew that would pass. He did not, however, care.

“You want to stab me in the back? Be my guest if you’re that desperate to prove you’re the better man.” He turned and walked away from Wolverine without giving him a second glance.

Wolverine took two quick steps after him, but Kitty Pryde interposed her body between the two men. “Don’t even,” she said.

Wolverine stopped in his tracks, regarding her with faint annoyance. Then he sheathed his claws and muttered, “Y’know, half-pint, you still ain’t too grown-up for me to give ya a good paddling.”

“Better than you have tried,” she said. Then she turned and ran after Scott.

She caught up with him as the rest of the students were left milling on the front lawn. “So…I missed the memo about morning calisthenics. Maybe you should have gone for jumping jacks to start, and then worked your way up to trying to kill each other…”

“Not now, Kitty.”

“Yes, now, Scott,” she said in a low, frustrated voice. “How the hell are we supposed to drill any sense of community into these kids if we can’t even—”

“I’m away ahead of you.”

“We have to stand for something!”

“As I said, way—”

Henry wants to know if you’re quite through making fools of each other
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while the new students look on?
Emma’s irritated voice sounded in Scott’s head.
Or are you and Mr. Pointy planning to take this indoors so we can have some more property damage? Because if so, then by all means, go to it. With every tenth insurance claim, we get a free toaster, and I think this’ll be number nine…

He ignored her obvious frustration. He understood it. Hell, he was responsible for it.
Senior staff
, he said telepathically,
in the Danger Room in ten minutes
.

To hell with that
. It was Logan’s voice. Obviously Emma had instantly conveyed Scott’s sentiments to the others, and Logan was making his feelings known through the shared mental link.
I don’t feel like sittin’ down in a room with One-eye right now. Forget it
.

Emma’s voice snapped back at him.
You want to talk about forgetting things, Logan? Either you be there, or else you’re going to forget everything you ever knew about yourself. I’ll construct an entirely new identity for you and send you out into the world to find your new destiny
.

You can’t do that
. But he sounded slightly uncertain.

I guarantee you, in your next life, you will be a musical-theater god. And I’ll make sure we have front-row seats for every performance
.

There was a pause. Scott wouldn’t have thought it was possible to growl telepathically, but apparently it was.
Fine
, Logan growled.

Good. I’ll have Henry prepare the Danger Room
.

Scott wasn’t wild about the sound of that. He liked Emma’s unpredictability. It was part of what made their relationship stimulating. This time, though, he was a little concerned with what she was going to come up with. Especially if she was putting her head together with the formidable Doctor McCoy.

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* * * *

“I
still can’t believe I was seeing what I was seeing. And in front of the students!” said Hank McCoy as he stood knee-deep in the Pacific Ocean.

Like modern-day Gullivers in the land of the Lilliputians, Scott, Kitty, Logan, and Emma towered over an assortment of Hawaiian islands. Clouds danced around their heads as a three-dimensional relief map of Hawaii was spread out all around them. Scott imagined he could hear teeny tiny Hawaiians running, screaming in terror as the gigantic mutants sat on the various islands.

Hank continued venting his frustration over the recent display. “And if Emma’s little game yesterday didn’t wind them up enough, they have to see their administrative staff trying to kill each other! These kids are supposed to look up to you!”