15

That was a less than fun thing she was never ever going to do again.

Srina found the time after Helga and company sprung her kind of vague and blurry around the edges; she felt like Captain Morgan had come to visit several times over. She assumed she was drugged, but boy, kind of a fun drug.

Getting out was a colorful smear; she only sobered up when the cool air of the outside hit her, and not that much. She had a vague awareness of Scott just collapsing a wall because he was pissed off with these people, and she couldn’t blame him. She was only truly capable of speech when they discussed the transportation problem they had.

Helga had to get the Sisters back to L.A. before sunrise - something about a teleport - and she said she could take care of the motorcycle, since no one could drive it (he didn’t even let Rogue volunteer). Logan was still so out it was like he was dead. And it was probably a good thing he was out, as Marcus - still a little woozy but otherwise okay - was carrying Logan over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry. He looked like he was sweating a bit under the strain of Logan’s weight in spite of all of his impressive muscles, but wouldn’t share the burden; it was the first curious thing she noted.

Marcus said he could drive, but he couldn’t take everyone, especially now that Logan would be taking up an entire row of seats. Scott decided to take one of the all terrain vehicles used by these sheep fuckers, but his broken arm was obviously hurting too much for him to use. Saddiq could drive, though, so he was going to get his chance. The groups broke up into Helga and the Sisters (and the bike), Scott, Rogue, and Saddiq, and her, Marcus, and Logan. They hadn’t freed anyone; according to Helga, they were the only people held there. Scott figured it could mean one of several things: this outpost wasn’t used or little used for that purpose; it had been cleared out; it was a trap. Marcus argued that there was no way it was a trap, especially since it didn’t come close to holding them for long. But there was no time to argue now, so it was pretty much tacitly decided that they could all wait until later.

Marcus seemed to be sobering up fast, which bode well for his driving, and once he got Logan laid out in the back, she asked him how he managed it, as she was still pleasantly lightheaded. “I’m highly toxic,” he said, digging out a spare key hidden behind a fake read out on the dashboard. “My system can break down drugs and poisons pretty fast. Not as fast as Logan, but fast enough.”

“I thought you just had poison under your fingernails.”

“That’s where it’s most concentrated, yeah, but I have trace amounts in other body fluids.”

“Really?” For some reason, that almost struck her as funny. “What about sex? I mean, can you …”

“Why do you think I use condoms?”

Okay, yeah, she didn’t want to think about that anymore. But did it mean his blood could be used as a weapon, if there was enough of it? Or maybe some kind of poison antidote?

Bloody hell, she was flying.

It was possible she nodded off during the drive; she honestly had no idea, and the fact that Marc decided to play some extremely ambient techno - the type that was mellow and sounded a bit like movie background music - helped guarantee that she felt like she was almost constantly slipping in and out of sleep. The music ebbed and flowed, pulling her down and washing her back again, and she found herself longing for something that would make it easier to keep track of things: aggressive rap, perhaps, or screaming hair metal. Anything but audio valium.

Marc stopped at a cheap motel over the Minnesota border, figuring they all needed the rest, and besides, he didn’t want to keep moving until he was sure Logan was okay (curiosity number two). He was still dead to the world, although she knew he was still breathing, as she had checked.

Marc got them room under phony names, and carried Logan into the room that she and him would be sharing, making her wonder if anyone had seen him do this, and, if so, what they must think. Hopefully they’d think he just passed out, and they weren’t dragging a corpse in here.

Marc went away for a while, he said he had to go get something, and she just closed the blinds and crawled onto the bed beside Logan, giving him the slightest shove. “Hey, you usually sleep on the left, you bastard,” she chided, giving him a shove, hoping that would wake him up. It didn’t. He looked cold in just his boxers, so she pulled up the homely beige, pink, and green rose patterned coverlet and put it over him, figuring the sheer itchiness of it just might wake him up.

Despite the traffic noise - they were near an off ramp - she must have dozed off a bit, because the next she knew was startled awake by Marc’s return. He’d been shopping, and brought them a bag of food, which was mainly a six pack of beer, bottled ice tea, and a bag of crisps (well, she could live with that), and he also bought Logan some clothes, so he could have something to wear when he got up. “Nothing special,” he claimed, setting the bags down on the lone armchair. “I just figured a pissed off guy in boxer shorts would get the cops called on him sooner rather than later.” Put that way, it sounded reasonable.

But curiosity got the best of her, and she looked through the bag. Marc had gone somewhere reasonably tasteful, and bought some black jeans (had she ever seen Logan in black jeans?), a jade green seamless t-shirt (gorgeous color; she bet it would look really good on him, with his skin tone), and some socks and leather boots. After taking a moment to admire Marc’s sense of style - and bugger her stupid if he didn’t have better taste than hers - she found herself wondering how he knew Logan’s sizes. Even she didn’t know Logan’s sizes. It could have been an educated guess, they were both big guys who could have been roughly the same size, but she felt it was more proof just the same, yet another curious thing.

Was Marc in love with Logan? If not, he was terribly fond of him. “Is that why you’re still unconscious?” She said, poking him in the side. “Avoidance?” It would explain a lot. Since when had he ever been out this long? Well, that time he almost bled to death.

Logan might have been a man, but he still must have known or at least had some inkling that Marc felt that way. But they were both macho guys, so maybe Logan pretended not to notice, and Marc pretended he didn’t care about him, thereby insuring a nice, solid friendship without any awkwardness. And who was she to upset that delicate balance by asking about it? But she knew if Marc had been a woman, or if Logan had been bi, she might have felt a pang of jealousy.

She was trying to figure out if it was even within the realm of possibility that they could take Logan to a hospital when she felt him jolt, and she looked over to see his eyes were now wide open, and he was staring up at the ceiling. “Hon?” she asked, as he didn’t look like he was blinking.

Finally he did, and rubbed his eyes. “What’s wrong with me? I feel fucking weird.”

“Join the club. I think they dosed us with something heavy duty.”

He sat up with a groan, dry washing his face. “Where the hell are we?”

“Calico Cat Motel in Podunk, Minnesota.”

“Uh huh. What happened?”

She gave him the shorthand version of it, which really wasn’t appreciably shorter than the so-called long version. They escaped, and there was little else to it. He listened, and then said, “This is some kinda telepathic hallucination, isn’t it?”

“If it is, it’s a really poor one. So my guess is no. Besides, don’t you have energy in your head?”

“Yeah, I think so, but there could be a way around it.”

“Well … maybe, but really, this is real.”

“You’d have to say that.”

She scowled at him. “Does this feel fake to you?” She gave him a backhand smack across the upper arm, aiming for a spot without a bone close to the surface, but he shifted at the last second and she caught his shoulder, her knuckles connecting solidly with a bone. “Oh bloody fuck!” She shouted, grabbing her hand as a small but palpable shock of pain shot through her hand and down her arm.

He quickly turned to her, taking her hands so he could look at the injured one. “What the fuck did you do that for?” he asked, sounding equally alarmed and annoyed.

“To show you what a fucking asshole you’re being,” she said, as he gently pried her hands apart and had a look at her injured one. “Is it my fault you’re a metal man?”

“I’m not a metal man,” he protested, but his voice faded in embarrassment. “I’m just … it’s just my skeleton.” He gently felt around her two red knuckles with his thumbs. “Doesn’t feel like you broke anything.”

“Good. Now do you think this is all telepathic illusions?”

He grimaced, and she was glad he felt like a dick. “No. Does this place have an ice machine?”

“I think so, a couple doors down.”

“I’ll go get some for your hand.” He started sliding off the bed, then stopped and looked down at his bare legs. “Where are my clothes?”

“They took ‘em. But Marc bought you some new ones.”

He grunted in response, a sort of semi-verbal “figures”. Yeah, he knew. “Why’d they take ‘em?”

She scrubbed a hand through her hair with her good hand. “Well, Helga said they found you in a tank.”

“A tank?”

“Yeah, like a … well, an aquarium, but bigger, and with no fish. A tank.”

He suddenly looked alarmed. “One filled with water?”

She was forced to shrug. “I wasn’t there, they just told me. Would‘ve been funny if it was filled with gelatin, though.”

“Did they tell you what they were doing to me?”

“No, they had no idea.” She hesitated before she asked, “Do you have any idea what they might have been doing to you?”

He stared at her a moment, as if he didn’t understand what she was asking, and then he looked away, glancing down at the brown carpet as if he just noticed how astoundingly ugly it was. “No, not at all,” he muttered, shoving himself off the bed and heading into the bathroom.

She didn’t know what was more frightening: the fact that he was lying, or the fact that the idea scared him so much he had to go hide for a minute.

***

By default, he was left to talk to Home Base, as Control was in no shape to do it, and everyone else above him in the chain of command was incapacitated or dead. That part would be the hardest to break to Home Base.

But he did his best, breaking down the salient points of Operation Breakwater and the general outcome. “Loss of life was significantly higher than projections,” he pointed out, looking at the data on his screen. “The women were unexpected variables, and seemed to have no compunction about killing, which they did extremely well.”

“The women? Which ones?”

“Uh, two that we believe to be NMHOUs, and another we believe to be severely mutated. They were unanticipated, and do not - as far as we can tell - reside at Xavier’s. The green woman may have some association with the mutant called Bob.”

“How I hate that name now. Was the implanting successful?”

He had to scroll through the screens, and grimaced at the idea of breaking even more bad news. “Inconclusive. Cyclops did more structural damage to the base than anticipated, and the women cut the power at an inopportune time, when the systems were still being backed up. We may be able to recover the data, but we don’t have the personnel at the moment.”

“Then why did you trigger the escape so early?”

“We didn’t. The women escaped on their own, ahead of schedule. We just didn’t factor enough of the unknown into our equations, nor did we anticipate that Cyclops would allow Wolverine to bring in hired killers on this mission.” Those three women must have been assassins, highly trained and extremely skilled; there was no other way to explain how they ripped through so many personnel so quickly. And how had several people bled death through tiny holes in the neck? There wasn’t even any blood on the floor. Now that was a professional at work.

Home Base sighed audibly, and he thought he heard the slap of a folder on a desktop. “Well, I guess we’ll know about the results soon enough.”

“Yeah,” he agreed hoping that he could end this conversation before he started discussing who was to blame. And whether or not they’d all live to regret it.

***

He was walking through the large, empty halls of Xavier’s, aware somewhere in the back of his mind that he was dreaming. He knew that was the case when the hall came to an end at a huge window wall, looking out on some overgrown, tropical forest that seemed to have spread over the grounds like a consumptive fungus. What the hell was this?

Scott approached the wall, wondering what this was supposed to mean symbolically, when sudden movement behind the glass and somewhere among the verdant growth made him jump. And his heart continued to skip beats as he realized he was face to face with Jean. “Scott, you have to help me,” she hissed, her voice barely a whisper between the panes of glass.

“What?” It was a question mostly of disbelief. But she looked genuinely frightened, her eyes wide and sweat popping out on her forehead, making red strands of her hair cling to her face like grasping vines.

“They’re trying to kill me,” she said, looking around as if she expected immediate attack. “You have to -”

Suddenly she was ripped away from the window by an unseen hand, and yanked screaming through the suffocating tangle of trees and lianas. He was momentarily stunned into paralysis, but he snapped out of it and backed up, putting a hand to his visor ...

... and nothing happened. He meant to shoot the window, break it, so he could go after Jean, but nothing was happening. Was the shutter stuck? He ripped it off and faced the window, eyes unprotected ... and still nothing. What the hell..?

"No," he shouted, figuring he had normal eyes again, like what Jean had given him before. He looked around frantically for something he could break the window with, but it started to disappear quickly, wood paneling growing over it like a sudden frost, window becoming wall.

"There's nothing you can do," Bob said behind him.

Scott pivoted on his heels, furious to find him here, in his mind of all places. "What?"

He held his hands open in what might have been a gesture of apology. "She's dangerous, you know that. I was hoping there'd be some other way, but now ... "

"But now what you fucking asshole?"

Bob hardly reacted to the words, his absurdly handsome face a mask of inscrutability. Only his eyes, electric blue and inhuman, gave any hint that he had heard him. "She's feeding the enemy now. We have to end it before things get out of control."

"End what?" He started forward, prepared to deck him if he had to, but it was like he ran into an invisible forcefield, power like static electricity sliding over his skin and pushing him back. He couldn't get within a meter of him. "What the hell do you mean she's feeding the enemy? Are you going to kill her, Bob?"

Again, that empty gesture of open hands, something that should have meant something, but didn't. "We do what we have to do. It's for the good of humanity."

He couldn't believe what he was hearing. This had to be a nightmare, right? It couldn't be real. "This is Jean we're talking about. Killing anyone isn't good for the sake of humanity, and certainly not her."

"This is god business; you have no place here," he claimed, and his eyes glowed so blue it was painful.

Scott jolted awake, the bright blue light still lingering in his mind. He sat up, gasping for breath, cold sweat trickling down his face, and tried to convince himself it was a dream. It was, wasn't it?

What if it wasn't?

He spent the next hour trying to figure out where the nightmare ended, and where reality began.

When he woke up feeling cold, hard stone beneath his back, he knew something was wrong.

He opened his eyes to find himself in a very narrow alley, barely a man's arm span wide, lined with cobblestones before giving way to uneven pavement. There were old tin garbage cans, battered and bent in, overflowing with vegetable peelings just starting to grow rancid. On the other end of the alley people walked by on the street, never looking in his direction or at the alley in particular.

He used the brick wall to help him get to his feet, and wondered why he was feeling so woozy. Was he mugged or something? And he was cold; the clothes he wore seemed thin for this level of shade and wind chill.

He ran a hand through his hair, expecting to find blood, but found none. Maybe he wasn't mugged? Maybe he just had too much to drink last night ..? For some reason, that sounded like a good possibility, even though he couldn't remember drinking. Actually, he couldn't remember anything, come to think of it.

He started out of the alley, onto the paved sidewalk lining the street, when he saw the golden glare of the sun and instantly recoiled. Something in him told him he had to avoid the sun because ... because ... well, because why? He couldn't remember that either, and the more he stood shivering in the shade, the more stupid and chickenshit it seemed.

He stepped out onto the street, braced for ... well, something ... but nothing happened, except a lanky teenage boy with a nose ring almost collided with him. "Watch where yer goin', gobshite," he said, his voice thick with an accent that seemed unusual ... but familiar.

Walking along the street, unsure where he was going, he looked around at the cars driving by, the old style brick and mortar buildings beside newer fashioned ones of glass and steel, and realized he knew this place. He wasn't sure how he knew it, of course, but it was strangely comforting.

His walking led him to a bridge overlooking a ribbon of greyish blue water, and when he stepped directly into a shaft of sun, he was surprised at how warm and comforting it was. He had been afraid of this? Why was he ever afraid of this?

There was an old man in a heavy blue overcoat and a grey fisherman's cap watching a boat on the water, and he turned to look at him curiously. "Y'all right lad?" He asked, with much the same accent that boy had. "Look a bit lost."

"I, uh -" he began, slightly startled by his own voice. Hey, he had an accent too! Wasn't as heavy as the man's, though. "I think I am, in a way. Where am I? I mean, what city is this?"

The old man's blue eyes sparkled with amusement, a ragged grin breaking out on his weathered face. "Got in your cups last night, eh? This is Dublin. That where yer supposed ta be?"

Dublin? It took him a moment to place the name, but he did. Dublin, Ireland - yes, he knew it! "Yeah, I think so," he agreed, trying to chuckle and make it a joke. Then he said a phrase that just popped into his mind. "Too much Guinness."

The old man chuckled, and he figured that had been the right thing to say. "That'll do it to ya. Might want to pace yourself next time."

An old woman, not far from them, shouted, "Henry, I‘m leaving!"

The old man sighed, and said, "Be careful, son." He then added, in a conspiratorial whisper, added, "Never get so drunk you wind up married to the first biddy that grabs ya." He then winked and turned away, chuckling at his own joke as he walked over to the old woman in the camelhair coat.

Did that make sense? Maybe ... maybe not. He wasn't sure just yet.

He just stood there, watching the sun sparkle like diamonds on the top of the water, and tried to recall his name. Angel? No, that wasn't right - why had he thought that?

Liam. His name was Liam.

With that realization came a sudden, unexpected feeling of bliss. It was so intense he felt like laughing. He was Liam and he was home, and he had no idea why that was so important, but it felt like some kind of triumph, some sort of victory.

How much had he had to drink last night?

He closed his eyes and turned his face towards the sun, letting it warm him as he breathed in the salt air. This felt good, unbelievably so, as if he'd been trapped underground for hundreds of year and just finally dug his way to the surface.

There were gaps in his mind - he knew this - but he also knew that it didn't matter. He was home now, and he would find what he needed; he would find a way to make this work.

He knew all he needed to know: his name was Liam, and he had won.

The End

(Well, until the next one…)