8

There were moments - few and far between, but still there - when it occurred to Jean she had completely lost herself.

She didn’t know when or where or how, but sometimes she’d get this odd feeling that things had gone too far out of control, and she had never realized she had lost a grip. Right now, for instance.

All gods, no matter how minor, had their own private worlds, and she figured she deserved one at least, so she tried to make one. But she didn’t know how, and her efforts were turning out to be pretty disappointing. She tried to picture her ideal world in her mind, make it come to life, but when she opened her eyes, she was in that representation of the garden, her former “happy place”, although now it was almost unrecognizable. It was so overgrown, a veritable jungle full of lianas and trees with trunks so thick they’d have put California redwoods to shame, and if the mansion was somewhere around here, she could no longer see it. In fact, the longer she was here, the more she began to realize that her “safe” place was now a nightmare, something indicative of imbalance and incoherence, not a place of peace and comfort but one of chaos and rage. In retrospect, she had no idea how it had ever gotten this way.

Then she’d begin to wonder why she cared. So what if her former paradise had become an overgrown, ramshackle jungle? Who gave a shit? She could make it whatever she wanted, including that. She didn’t need a “safe” place anymore anyway; she could create a world just for that purpose if she wanted.

Assuming, of course, she could get the hang of this whole “world building” thing. It was a shame she had no one she could ask. But if even a loser like Osiris could pull it together, she could. Bob never had though, had he?  But, then, he wasn’t a proper god - just a reject, a cosmic misfire.

She was able to turn Alkali Lake into an ocean at the very least though, and gave it a sandy shore that she sat on, trying to ponder her next move. She was modifying the color of the sky, changing it from blue to green to red to brown (well, that was an usual color) when she got the sense that something was wrong. It was a feel deep inside, like a tug at that back of her brainstem, and suddenly she was aware of an … imbalance, greater than her own. What the hell was that?

She stood up and looked around, deeply puzzled. She was still alone here, wasn’t she? No one could come here without her permission … well, another god, but even then, she’d instantly sense the intrusion. Wouldn’t she?

She turned around, and gasped in shock as she found herself face to face with a being she had never seen before.  He was a biped, very humanoid in look, but his skin was covered with huge, tan and silver diamond shaped scales, like a diamondback rattler made into a man.  His eyes were huge and almond shaped, with slit yellow pupils and pupils swollen and an odd wet red, like they were rings full of blood, while his lips were thin and black, nearly nonexistent.  He had no hair at all, his scalp looked like burnished copper and pewter, and he only wore pants of what looked like shed snakeskin, ragged and nearly translucent at the edges. His chest was oddly long and narrow, ribs poking through like he was a starvation victim baked hard by the sun.  The power he gave off was intense, like heat from a kiln, and left a taste in her mouth like sand and charred flesh. She threw up a force field between them, but for some reason it felt flimsy, even to her. He didn’t seem to notice or even care.

“He’ss mine,” he hissed sibilantly, his voice the sound of dead leaves scraping over dried bones. “The power belongss to me.”

“What?” She started backing up, because the energy coming off of him seemed somehow hotter now, a nuclear blast furnace.

“It’ss mine!” He screamed, and the world around her seemed to collapse in on itself, the heat exploding inside her mind like a psychic fireball.

9

People willingly lived in North Dakota?

The idea that they did was honestly mind boggling to Chris Washington.  He was assigned to this base, andhe was still looking forward to the first honest opportunity to get the fuck out of here.  As if being on the surface wasn’t bad enough, they were beneath North Dakota, which was that much more boring then the surface world. And why the hell were they below the surface anyway?

Nothing ever happened here, in the state generally and in this place specifically.  People came and went with extreme regularity, but only those with higher ranks or mysterious “civilians” who had insane security clearance levels. Why civilians would have levels that high at a secured location, especially when not all soldiers had a clearance that allowed them into the lower two levels?  There was some weird shit going on here, that was for sure.

“Hit me,” Reynolds said. Guy was chewing noisily on a mint toothpick, his new oral fixation since the close quarters and recirculated air had forced him to give up smoking.  It still remained the number one vice of everyone around here, save for Chris; he’d had asthma as a kid, and couldn’t fathom the idea of willingly sucking down something other than air.

Chris checked his cards, which were a Jack of Hearts and a ten.  He was pretty sure Guy couldn’t beat a twenty, not with a paltry two as a face card. He pulled a card off the top of the deck and tossed it face up on top of his two of diamonds - it was the Queen of Spades.

“Hit me again.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah, I’m sure. Hit me.”

Guy really didn’t know how to play blackjack, did he?  Chris shrugged and tossed down another card on his side of the console, vaguely aware that the elevator from the surface had been activated. The computer said that it was Mueller coming down, which made him curious. Was it that dull on the surface?  Actually, come to think of it, yeah - it probably was.

He tossed down one more card, this time an eight of diamonds. “Shee-it,” Guy drawled, throwing over his hole cards, which were a two of clubs and a three of hearts. “Busted.”

“You really should have stood at seventeen,” Chris noted, sweeping the cards together in a pile. The console that made up the bulk of the observation room was as high-tech as possible, made of impact proof plastic and brushed aluminum, with flat touch screens scattered among the camera’s monitors, which stood stacked six to a row, one after another, and reminded him vaguely of a Tetris game.  It had taken him a while to get used to the system, which was still plagued with glitches.  For that reason alone, he bet this place ran on Windows.

He passed the deck of cards to Guy, who took them and suggested, “How ‘bout War?”

“Why don’t you just suggest Go Fish?  Shit man, you have to learn how to play a proper game of cards, so when we hit Vegas, you don’t look like a chump.”

“Hell, when we hit Vegas, I ain’t gamblin’; I’m headed for the Mustang Ranch.  I mean-- hey, is that elevator empty?”

Chris peered at the correct monitor, which showed the doors opening on the first level … and no one inside the elevator. The doors then closed without incident, and the elevator started its return ascent to the surface. “Huh. The code had Mueller in there.”

“Think he’s fucking around with us?” Guy wondered, shuffling the cards.  He wasn’t very good at it, and the noise seemed excessively loud.

“Why would he?”

“’Cause he’s as bored as we are.”

That was a point. He activated the short range radio, and sent, “Mueller, come in.” There were several seconds of silence, broken only by the slap of cards on the console as Guy dealt the next hand. Chris saw his face card was the Ace of Spades. “Kevin, c’mon, stop fucking around. We know you sent down that empty elevator.”

The hallways remained empty, and the elevator didn’t come back, but suddenly Chris had a bad feeling about this.

“Dude?” Guy asked. “Wanna hit or not?”

“Huh?  Oh.” He looked at his hole card, revealing the King of Diamonds. He flipped it face up, and said, “Blackjack.”

“Shit!” Guy snapped, tossing the deck down hard on the console. “What the hell am I doing wrong?!”

“Nothin’, it’s just luck.” A sub-corridor door opened, and once again the computer said it was Mueller’s card in use. “What the fuck is going on?  Kevin, c’mon, check in.”

Now Guy was starting to get concerned, an expression of worry flashing across his Middle American, corn-fed farm boy face. “Could this be a new glitch?  The doors opening by themselves?”

“And constantly reporting Mueller’s I.D. in use?  That’s one fucking weird glitch. ”Chris shifted nervously in his chair, and muttered, “I should report this to Alvarez.”

“Whoa, dude, report what?  Nothing? C’mon.” He paused, and said, with a goofy grin that revealed the large gap between his front teeth. “Maybe it’s a ghost. Whoooo ….”

“Knock it the fuck off. Remember the last briefing?  Anything weird, report it.”

It was just then that he heard the lock on their door release.

They both jumped to their feet, wheeled chairs shooting half way across the room, and pulled their sidearms, aiming them at the adamantium plated door before it hissed open.

There was nothing there.

“All ghosts put your hands up,” Guy said mockingly, but the weakness in his voice undercut the sarcasm.

Chris edged forward, heart in his throat, leading with his gun. He was so tense, he nearly jumped when the door started to hiss shut.

“It’s a glitch,” Guy insisted. “It’s gotta be.” Then why was he whispering?

“There’s somebody in here,” Chris said quietly, wondering what the hell was going on.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a flash of red, and that was the last thing he saw before everything went black.

****

Two quick blasts of the eye lasers - or whatever it was that Scott actually had;  they seemed to hit the soldiers like a ton of bricks, sending them sailing across the room like they’d been nailed by a Buick - and then Reynolds and Washington were down, and they had the observation post all to themselves.

“You know, if we didn’t have to go back and get directions from Rogue, this would have gone faster,” Srina pointed out, relaxing into visibility and letting go of Scott’s arm.

Scott headed straight for the main console of room, not even giving her a second glance. “It didn’t matter, she was right behind us.”

“Copping Logan’s ‘tude - I noticed.”

“She gets that way after she absorbs him.  It’s annoying, but presumably this one will fade a lot faster than the last time.”

Srina left him to look and faff about, while she crouched down and picked up one of the guns the soldiers had pulled. She didn’t know much about guns, and she didn’t like them, but this one looked kind of funny. She was going to ask Scott about it (well, he was the American, and if they knew anything, they knew their guns), but when she stood, he made a small noise of frustration, and said, “Why did they have to make all the hallways look the same?”

‘’Cause they’re military and into all that uniformity and conformity shit.” She glanced at the monitors, a large rectangle six across and six up with monitors, and was stunned at how much it looked like the security office of a high tech building she'd “snuck” into last year. Well, they hadn't had touch screens and computer coded data in the lower right corners of the display, but it was still similar enough that she knew there was a wrinkle in their plans. “Are you looking for cameras showing the lower two levels?”

“Of course! But it isn’t like they labeled these things …”

“See these numbers?” She said, pointing to the bank of monitors. “They all start with one point or two point something.”

“Yes?”

“First level, second level. The levels are split into segments of twelve; twelve cameras on each level. There’s a separate camera room, probably on the third floor.”

He studied the numbers carefully, but his shoulders quickly slumped. “Shit.  I can’t believe this.”

“At least we can secure these two levels though, right?” Why was she looking for a bright side?  She'd known this was a mistake, and now she thought she really should catch the first bus out of here, but she couldn’t leave Logan to these bastards, who had already ruined his life once.  He’d almost had to kill her to hide her from them, right, and probably paid for that lie at some point?  So this was absolutely the least she could do for him.

“How did you know?” He asked. Did he sound suspicious, or just curious?  She couldn’t read his face, so she wasn’t sure.

“Did Logan tell you what I do for a living?”

His brow furrowed, like he didn’t get the conversational shift. “No.”

She didn’t immediately supply a response. She had a feeling he wouldn’t see “thief” as a legitimate career option, or a good use of her powers.

Luckily, he took a guess before she settled on a good lie. “Security?”

“Yep, absolutely mate, office security.  And there’s a place in London that has a set-up almost exactly like this.” At least that bit was true.

“Do you know how we can override this system, or hack into it?  I assume they all work off the same mainframe?”

Oh shit. “It would depend on a lot of things.  I’m only familiar with business applications, not military.  For one thing, they don’t have touch screens.”

“Hmm.” She wasn’t sure if that was for her, or just aimed at the system in general.  He tried a few “buttons”, called up a menu or two, and finally asked, “What time have we got?”

“Huh?” She glanced at her watch, and tried to remember when Logan said they’d be coming in. “Two minutes, give or take a few seconds.”

“Well, I guess I’ve got time to try something,” he sighed, with almost no enthusiasm at all.

She thought about putting down the gun, but then she realized she might need it, and gripped the handle so tight she was sure it was now embedded into her palm.  If she'd ever needed proof she was not cut out to be a commando, she supposed she had it now.

***

Although Logan led the way down, the Sisters wanted to be on point, so he allowed it, as it seemed pointless - ha! - to argue with them.  Still, he was leading them by scent, and leaving Marcus to basically hold Rogue back, as she wanted to take the lead. Luckily, some of his own general respect for Marc must have transferred along with his power, because she was generally listening to him.

They encountered no one on their brief trip to the observation room, and no alarms sounded, so he assumed that Srina and Scott had secured the room, a supposition confirmed when the door hissed open as they approached, and Srina peered out at them, her expression somewhere between anxious and exhausted. “We’ve hit an impasse,” she said quietly.

Everybody remained silent until they had filtered in and the door had shut behind them, and then Marc asked, “What’s the new shit we’re in?”

“I can’t access the second level cameras,” Scott said, not bothering to look up from the console he was fiddling with. “It has a hell of a firewall, and I can’t get anywhere.”

“Let me have a look,” Marc said, joining him.

“We really don’t need to access those cameras, do we?” Helga suggested. “Let’s just hit ‘em with every fucking thing we got. They've got muties on their side?  Fine - they'll show themselves instantly, and we take ‘em out. I’m sure we got enough firepower here to take ‘em.”

Scott looked back enough to scowl at her. “That sounds like suicide.”

“No, being here is suicide - for you,” she replied tartly.

“You think they’ll know your fine green ass is demon on first sight?” Marc replied. “They’ll cage you if they can.”

“Let ‘em try.”

“We-”

“-like-”

“-cages.”

“Would you two stow it already?” Rogue snapped, rolling her eyes at the Sisters. “Jesus.”

“Hey,” Logan exclaimed, annoyance making him feel as good as new. “We can bullshit this if we have to.”

“How?” Scott asked, sounding almost hostile.

Marc threw up his hands, only one of which now had a glove on it.  He'd taken one off on the chance he'd have to grab someone and paralyze them - or worse. “This system is fucked.  If we had a few hours maybe we could crack it, but it ain’t happenin’ on our timetable.”

“Logan, you could just put your claw through it,” Rogue interjected impatiently. “That’ll shut everything down.”

“Not really,” Sri said. “It could set off every alarm in the bloody building.”

Scott held up his hand, signaling for silence, and wasn’t that an act of tragic optimism?  “Logan, what do you mean we can bullshit this?”

He pointed at the two soldiers who were laying splayed on the floor, dead to the world thanks to a couple of optic blasts presumably. “Two of us are them.  Two of us put on their uniforms, take their key cards, and try and bluff our way down to the third level.”

Scott scoffed, crossing his arms over his chest. “How long will that bluff last?  Sixty seconds?”

“”We only need to convince them long enough to get access to the third level, that’s it.”

“The two who go down will be instantly attacked.”

“Ooh, pick me!” Rogue insisted.

The way Scott’s jaw tensed, he probably wanted to scowl or curse, but didn’t bother. “The soldiers are men, Rogue. The two who go down have to be men.”

“And one of ‘em’s me,” Logan replied, belatedly aware that he was echoing Rogue’s sentiment somewhat - or had she just spoken the same thought first?  Damn, it was hard sharing a personality.

“No, that hasn’t been decided.”

“Yeah, Scott, it has. I know these guys, and it’s my stupid ass plan anyway.  I’m going.”

“I guess that makes me number two-o,” Marc said, approaching the nearest fallen soldier and pulling off his jacket.

That really ticked off Scott. “Wait just a minute -”

“He’s black!” Marc interrupted, pointing at the soldier. “So am I.  And you know what they say about us all looking like each other to white people.  They’ll hardly even notice.  But Logan? Yeah, he’ll queer the pitch fast.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“Don’t take it wrong, amigo. It’s just that you don’t have regulation hair.”

“You guys can have a pissing contest in a moment,” Srina interjected. “First of all we have to decide how we get you down there. Didn’t you notice the elevator only goes to the first two levels?  The third and fourth are locked off; they must be controlled from those levels.”

At least Logan had already figured out that part of the plan. “That console has some kind of communication device on it, yeah?”

Scott nodded. “Of course.”

“We pretend to be one of these guys, and claim that - what was the name of that guard you absorbed, Rogue?”

“Kevin Mueller.”

“We radio the lower levels, tell - Commander’s name, Rogue?”

“Alvarez.”

“Tell Alvarez that a mutie attacked Mueller, but he was able to subdue him, and we got ‘em, but we don’t know how long they’ll be controllable and we need to bring ‘em down right now.”

Scott mulled that over a moment, scratching his head as he considered it. “So many damn holes. Why would they buy it?”

Suddenly Saddiq yelled, with great and angry enthusiasm, “Fucking mundanes, get your hands off me!”  He then kicked the wall furiously, leaving a large dent. “I’ll kill you all, you fucking infidel butchers!” He then faced them, and asked, “Too much?”

“Leave out infidels,” Logan suggested. “Otherwise, yeah, good idea.  The mutant’s raising hell in the background. It should also make the person’s voice harder to distinguish.”

“But what about us?” Helga aggressively countered. “So three of you get a trip down to the third level - maybe - but if you got an angry mutant prisoner, you will be met in force, and the jig will be up faster than a frat boy getting his first lap dance. What the hell are the rest of us supposed to be doing while you three  are getting the shit beaten out of you?”

“Could we cut through?” Rogue asked, looking down at the floor.

“Adamantium-”

“-plated-”

“-even if-”

“-they were-”

“-very thin floors-”

“-only Logan could -”

“-cut through them and-”

“-it would take hours.”

They were right, of course, but Logan wondered, “How’d you know it’s adamantium plate?”

The Weirds smiled at him, pleased that he had asked. “We-”

“-can-”

“-smell it.”

But Rogue wasn’t ready to give up just yet. “I bet they got something adamantium around here we could use, like a drill or an axe or something.”

“We-”

“-know-”

“-how to-”

“-get down-”

“-there with you-”

“-without their noticing-”

“-we vampires are expert-”

“-at sneaking-.”

“And I can go down with you guys and someone else,” Sri offered, albeit somewhat half-heartedly.  She didn’t want to get caught in a firefight, and he couldn’t blame her.

“Okay, so we got a plan?” Marc said, slipping on the fallen soldier’s jacket.  He took off his lone glove and shoved it in his pocket. “Let’s get this going.”

“No,” Scott insisted. “We haven’t decided on the prisoner, the one going down with them.”

Saddiq looked vaguely surprised. “It’s not me?”

An argument briefly ensued, but not for long. Logan knew full well, if they were going to be facing a large group of angry, well armed soldiers in close quarters, there was only one person in their little party who could guarantee them some breathing room right away.

10

Ama’s place was pretty much like he’d last seen it, with its green-as-grass sky and marble plazas, but as soon as Bob appeared, he realized it was quieter than usual, and seemed emptier - a natural lull, perhaps. Still, it was almost eerie, and he was happy to fill the silence. “I could buy myself a reason, I could sell myself a job,” he sang, but more quietly than usual; it was like being in a library. “I could hang myself on treason, for I am my own damn god.”

“You sing the weirdest things,” Yasha commented.

He found her lounging alone in Ama’s hot tub milk bath, visible only from the shoulders up as the milk frothed and steamed around her like the world’s biggest espresso. “I know. But if I started singing from the Rogers and Hammerstein oeuvre, I’d have to shoot myself.”

“Not a big musical fan?”

“Not really, no. Shocking, isn’t it?”

“A bit.”

He crouched down beside the tub, actually tempted by the warmth to just go ahead and jump in, but he didn’t know Yasha well enough to do such a thing. “Ama about?”

She shrugged, causing an undulation in the surface of the water. “Probably.  I think she went after the sylphs for some reason.”

“In the woods, huh? Good, ‘cause you’re really the one I wanted to talk to first.”

She quirked an eyebrow at him. “Me? Is this about Logan?”

“No. But I was wondering if what you told him about wanting to move on was actually true.”

“You mean die? Yeah. There’s something around here, though, that just makes torpor set in.”

“And Ama likes the company.”

She nodded, strands of her dark hair moving in the liquid like tentacles. “I’m not as annoying as the sylphs.”

He wondered if there was any way to dance around the question, but even if there was, he didn’t think she’d appreciate it. “Your curse is gone, isn’t it?”

She didn’t even pretend to be surprised. “I think so. But I can hardly get into trouble here, can I?”

“I know. Bit of a bummer.”

“Yeah. Is that what you wanted to talk to me about?”

“No. I was going to ask you if you’d do me a favor. But I warn you - it’s a suicide mission.”

She considered that a moment, staring into the frothy white foam seemingly undergoing mitosis on top of the hot milk, and then glanced up at him with a sly, deadly smile. “Do I get to take someone out along the way?”

Vampires did have their good points at times. Well, depending on your definition of good.

***

They bought it.

But with Saddiq raising hell and cursing at the top of his lungs in the background, and Marc sounding completely stressed out and pissed off, how could they not?  He put a couple more dents in their walls too, although he really didn’t need to; it was probably a personal statement.

Marc found a camouflage patterned hat that he jammed on Logan's head to hide his hair, in case there were cameras in the elevators, monitoring downward traffic for level three. He hated it, but he knew it was probably for the best, and pulled the brim down to hide his eyes. If he held his head at the right angle, it might conceal most of his facial hair from a few vantage points as well.

They both put on the sidearms of the soldiers, along with their outer uniforms, and studying the gun, Marc claimed it fired some kind of “new fangled” cartridge.  He didn’t know what, but was eager to find out, although Scott gave them the “no killing” warning once more, just in case they hadn’t heard it before.

Everybody knew the plan, and knew their place.  Srina and Rogue went into the elevator ahead of them, invisible, as Logan and Marc quickly followed, the prisoner propped up between them, head hanging down as if semi-conscious. They had to cuff him to sell it, but Logan cut the chain connecting the cuffs so there was maybe a half a link holding them together - a good tug and they’d break apart.

The Sisters and the others stood waiting for them to go. The Sisters' plan was actually pretty solid: they would pry apart the doors on the second floor - they did have the physical strength - and jump down the shaft. Once they hit the top of the elevator, they’d wait for the shooting to start before crashing in through the top of the elevator car and joining the fray. Even if an alarm on the lower levels signaled a breach in the shaft, they’d be on the floor before anyone could do anything about it. Everybody else would be coming with them, and everybody with them could take the drop.

As soon as the doors slid shut and they started their slow descent, Logan muttered, “We ready?”

“We’d better be,” Marc whispered back. “There’s no do-overs.”

There was a small thud on top of the elevator, but they all managed to ignore it.

Logan kept looking down, shielding his face from direct view, as the elevator came to a slow stop, and the doors hissed open.