PARADISE LOST

Chapter 1

"IN HERE!" X shouts at me, the cords in her neck straining. I can't tell if she's afraid or not, because the air is soaking with fear and adrenaline, so potent that I can't tell what organ I'm using to detect it anymore. Our footsteps sound scratchy against the cracked pavement and echo among the empty buildings. Scratch-clap, scratch-clap, scratch-clap, BOOM! in the distance.

"No!" I snap at my companion, who looks over her shoulder—and slows down, her eyes wide with terror, slack-jawed and speechless. She makes a tiny whimper. I yank her wrist more roughly than I mean to. Hard to control my metal grip when I'm terrified and my hands are directly controlled by my thoughts and emotional state. I've been guiding her like a lost child for the last half an hour of mindless terror and exploding brick and flying fragments and flashes of light from shock waves…so it's safe to say I'm a little upset. We follow X, who is tearing at the ground with her shining claws. I don't understand at first, then I see there's a manhole cover, melted into the charred pavement.

I shove her out of the way and use my mind to rip the cover off like it wasn't even there. No time to be delicate because the grim reaper is breathing over my shoulder. Then I take my companion by the waist and lift her down into the darkness, her making loud noises of terror because she hates small spaces after what they did to her in Camp Two. "Shut UP!" I yell, then look over my shoulder. "Where the hell are the others?"

"There's no time, you should get in—" X begins.

"They're our friends! We don't leave them behind—FIND THEM, you fucking robot!" I shout at her, in anger now. She closes her eyes, and then turns her head in the direction we have come from—toward the smoky area. Then she starts to go. I regret yelling at her, and I catch her wrist. "X, I'm sorry, I—"

"Contact them telepathically and I will assist them," she says stiffly.

I feel stupid at having momentarily forgotten. I close my eyes and start to dig into the space around me, with my mind, searching for signs of life. I can sense X beside me—or rather, the absence of X because I can't see into her like the others, she's like a silhouette—then there's our hunters, their minds on fire with the thrill of the chase as they program their remote-control killing machines—and, far off in the distance, I can hear Cessily, kind of muted. She's panicking about Santo. I open my eyes. "East," I say, making a move to go. X pulls me back, with her wrist, which I am still holding.

"I will go," she says. "Alone."

"I'll help you," I insist, still feeling like ass about calling her a robot. While I don't know much about X—even after all this time in her company—I know she hates that like nothing else. I made the mistake of saying that to her once before, and I thought she would kill me.

She shakes her head. "It was my fault—I allowed them to fall behind. Please, get into the sewer."

I think about it for a moment. Then I pull us into the air, flying in the direction of our friends. X gives me an impatient look. She's also always hated the fact that I can overrule her decisions like they didn't even happen, but she never says anything, not once in the fifteen years that we've been leaning on each other for survival. I would probably give her a shit-eating grin, but I'm not in the mood for joking around right now. My head's buzzing like it's full of bees, and I've almost pissed myself three times in the last half-hour. And before all this—before we stumbled on the booby-trap mess of Nimrod MKII Sentinels—I was already having a bad day.

I thought it was going to be halfway decent. I'd opened my eyes this morning and looked at the murky orange-grey sky and wanted to kill myself as per usual, but then Sofia had woken up and smiled at me in the way she used to before the world just upped and quit on us. This was so cheering that I didn't smoke this morning. Which I now hardily regret. She kissed me, also like she used to, and I thought that the two year drought was over, the drought that began when we lost our sixth member—Nori—and I started to slip my fingers under her shirt, but then she pushed me away and said that she couldn't.

I don't know if it's really Nori's death that upset Sofia so much. She's never been okay with my metal hands, not since I got them—a joint effort between X and Cessily—not since I lost my real ones at Camp Three. I try to stay out of her head, but it's hard to not pick up on the fact that my hands repulse and terrify her. And she's already terrified enough.

"There!" X says, pointing. I follow her finger and then angle us downward, toward Cessily, who is in an alleyway and facing a Stalker Nimrod by herself. By herself. Her mind is blank and shut-down. We swoop overhead and I grab her by her reaching hand, although I don't think it was reaching for me. "Where's Santo?!" I shout over the wind, because I can't mind-search too well while I'm concentrating on our navigation and shielding. We'll get a pretty big tail any moment now, and I have no clue if my blocks are strong enough for Nimrod MKII's. They can just barely handle MKI's as is.

"I—I saw—he was blown up!" she says, forcing herself to speak, to communicate. I now feel an edge of panic. Santo can come back from being blown up…but not atomized. If the Sentinel wasn't using its power save feature…

"We don't have time," X says to me. I grit my teeth, but I know she's right. If Santo's rubble right now, we have little chance of recovering him without getting ourselves killed. Better to hide and let things simmer down a bit, then recover him. He won't be in danger—not like us—and maybe I can contact him mentally. I do a 360 and start to head back for the sewer where Sofia waits, probably bat-shit insane by now. Good, maybe she'll identify with me more, I think blandly.

I'm not really insane, but my mind wanders a lot into dark corners. I think it started somewhere between the massacre and the executions, kind of just after the massive skull crack. Or was it after I discovered I could hear my friend's thoughts as they died? I liked it back when I was just lifting stuff with my brain instead of feeling it, too. Maybe I started overthinking things because it seems to help keep myself in my own head. And secretly, I feel that analyzing every detail of my life will help me master it and maybe keep it.

Focus, I order myself, my nose twitching. I realize I'm getting pretty tired of flying. X isn't that heavy, but I'm also carrying myself and Cessily, the latter weighing about three hundred pounds (but I would never tell her that). By the time we reach the street the sewer entrance is on, my arms are shaking. I hear a loud rrrrumble behind us, indicating we've picked up a tail.

"Drop me," X says.

I close my eyes, shake my head and concentrate on my target. The pavement is rushing up to meet us, but so is the rumble. The MKII's can fly nearly as fast as I can, but I am also weighed down right now so it has a definite advantage. It also has the advantage of being able to radiate shockwaves while in flight—another thing I can't do.

The sewer entrance is suddenly right in front of us. We zip into it like rabbits falling down a hole, and the Nimrod flies straight. As we tumble into the aged slime, I wrack my aching brain for a way to conceal the entrance—and our body heat.

"Stay in the water!" X commands us, on the same thought that I am. "It will lower our thermal signatures. The Nimrod will think we are dead."

"Mmm…" comes a whimper from the darkness. Sofia.

"How can we cover the entrance?" I ask X, who is my right-hand man for tactics. Like I said before, we lean on each other for survival, and I mean quite literally. If either of us two bought the farm I'm quite certain the others wouldn't last a day.

X looks up at the small hole of light, her long hair dripping sewage, her skin stained with dirt and burn marks from our earlier combat. She took a low-level shockwave for me and Sofia, which makes me feel even worse about calling her a robot. "The pavement," she decides. "Stretch it over the gap."

I reach up and follow her directions, manipulating it on the molecular level. It's thin, but it works—the circle of light blacks out, and I hear Sofia shriek in the corner.

"Shhh," Cessily says. "Sofia….here, get in beside me. It'll be okay."

I feel mildly assholish in not even trying to comfort my frantic girlfriend, but at the moment I've got bigger concerns. Such as being prepared for a Nimrod to burst through the cement cover I've made and boil us alive in the sewage. That would kinda be a fitting end to my shitty life. I watch the dark entrance, my eyes narrowed, my hand outstretched and glowing lightly—as does X. Her claws are still out and ready for action, and I feel reassured, even though that's ridiculous. She can't do anything to defend us against a full blast from an MKI, let alone an MKII.

A few moments pass, then there is a snakkt! sound. "It's gone," X says. "We need to move further into the tunnels."

"Before it backtracks," I add, knowing that it will be back at some point. It might even figure out the sewer entrance. Nimrods are smarter than your average Trask period Sentinel. While the big old clunkers were designed to deal with chance encounters, Nimrods exist for the sole purpose of sniffing out high-threat mutant targets and exterminating them. I replace 'high threat' with 'the last' when thinking about our situation.

We wade down the tunnel for a while, until X says that it is probably far enough. There are now elevated platforms on either side of the sewage trough, to which we wade. We then drag ourselves out, shaking with exhaustion and the pain we're all starting to acknowledge, now that the adrenaline is starting to wear off. I sit on the concrete for a moment, close my eyes and pinch the bridge of my nose, trying to stem the almost blinding headache I'm developing. The pain is so loud that I can't even hear the thoughts of the people around me. It's like I've stepped back in time. I think, for a few seconds, about what I would be like now if I didn't read minds, if I couldn't see what was going on behind the scenes. Probably dead.

I hear Cessily on the other side murmuring to Sofia and probably rubbing her shoulder. The latter whispers something back that I can't hear. I should go to her, but I detect movement beside me. Turning my hand into a flashlight, I see that it's X, kneeling on all fours, her forearms shaking and her teeth gritted. I think about what she's been through today, the hits she took for us, the fact that she's been eating and sleeping a hell of a lot less than anyone else...and what I said to her earlier.

"You okay?" I ask.

She turns to look at me. Her eyes flash lightly in the darkness, the reflective receptors at the backs of her eyes catching the dim light of my hand—very catlike. "Fine," she says, forcing herself to sit up. "We need to move," she says again.

"Yeah, yeah." I look around us. We're at the entrance of a big chamber that seems to be filled with sewage, dark shapes and doorways, probably a central junction of some sort. This is promising—there's probably a maintenance room somewhere, in which we can sit and maybe rest in shifts without fear of rolling into the sewage and drowning. "Go exploring?" I ask her.

She nods. I look over at Cessily and Sofia. "You stay here," I order. "We'll see if there's a safe spot somewhere. Call me if there's trouble."

"Okay," Cessily says. Sofia looks at me with wide eyes. "But—but—the light," she stammers.

"I'll be back, soon," I say. "Just stay there."

X gets to her feet, and we start to walk along the small concrete walkway, me limping from a sore leg that I hadn't noticed before. Must have been when I got slammed into the brick wall earlier. Luckily nothing broke. Breaks are a real bitch—I've had to deal with them before. I usually set and repair them somewhat with my mind by routing energy through the area—which seems to naturally connect the gaps—and then I try to be really, really careful. I can shift molecules around well enough, but I don't know much about human anatomy and so I'm nervous to really try anything else.

We walk for a few minutes, stopping to glance inside doorways. Most lead to new sections of sewage. A few are walled off. We pass a long row of big cylindrical drums, and then X stops for a moment, smelling the air. Then she points in the direction of the corner opposite to us in the big room. "I smell dry brick….and electricity…over there," she says. Her finger is shaking.

"Good." I pause. "X…I'm sorry about earlier. I didn't mean it."

"Go get the others," she replies. "I will investigate the room."

"No, I want to…clear the air between us, first." I pause, hold my lit fingers a little higher so I can see her face, which is guarded, her eyes narrowed slightly—but that could be because I'm shining a light in her face after she's been in the dark for a while. "It was wrong of me to say that. I might not know that much about you…but enough to know you're not a machine. You've done a lot for us and I don't think you would if you didn't care."

She gazes at me and says nothing.

"Do you accept my apology?" I ask directly.

"Yes," she says, and looks down, her eyebrows drawing together. She opens her mouth. "I…" but then she shakes her head. "Go and get the others."

"What?" I ask, curious.

"Forget it."

"No, what? Tell me," I say. In fifteen years, I've never seen her volunteer more conversation than she deems strictly necessary. It's usually a 'yes' or 'no' answer, unless it's a tactical direction—the only time she's not monosyllabic. I wouldn't ever accuse X of being a chatterbox.

"It is not my place." She looks at me again, her expression more composed. I feel startled as I realize that it had been vulnerable a few moments ago.

"Come on," I say, sniffing. I'm vaguely aware that my nose has begun to trickle blood, probably related to my terrific migraine. Or maybe it's actually my brains leaking out. I've overused my powers so much today that I think my head has turned to a bloody slush inside. Reaching up, I wipe it on the back of my sleeve and stare at her, waiting for an answer.

"No." She turns and begins to head into the darkness. I hesitate, then shrug and head back to the others. When I reach them, Sofia tackle-hugs me and clings on, trembling and almost speechless with fear. We move slowly in the direction I had come from, and finally—ten or twenty minutes later—we reach the room that X had indicated. She is inside it, sitting on a cement ledge and unlacing her knee-high boots.

"This is great," I say, holding my glowing hand up high and looking around the space. There's several dry ledges, a map on the wall, and what looks like a few electrical generators to one side. No food unfortunately…but then who would want to eat anything they find in a sewer?

"It will suffice," X replies, examining her boots—which are probably soaked. I set Sofia down on a ledge. "Can you let go of my neck?" I ask her, wincing. My head's going to pop off at any second now.

"S-sorry," she mumbles.

"It's okay," I say, like I always do.

…

We're sitting on either side of the stone doorway, X and I, while Sofia and Cessily sleep on the ledges. Normally we take opposite pair-turns doing the shifts—X and Cessily, me and Sofia, but right now the other two are too exhausted to be remotely competent. Besides, I want to try and coax X's earlier comment out, maybe get to know her a little better since I've been reminded that I know next to nothing about someone I depend on for survival. Or maybe just distract myself from the fact that—yet again—I don't know if my best friend is alive or dead.

"So, what do you think of all this?" I ask her in a half-whisper, leaning my head back against the brick wall.

X looks at me, her eyebrows arched. "Of what?" she asks.

I grin. "Of our new home among the shit and the rats."

She thinks. "It is the safest place at the moment."

"Right." I return her look. "Too bad we'll starve down here."

"I do not think so. There is vermin and—"

"Stop," I say, gagging. "Just—god, X—stop." It's been bad a few times—and once or twice we've lived on small wildlife—but I refuse to sink to the level of eating sewer rats to survive. I just won't, I won't. I wonder subconsciously if it's because I identify with them too much.

She turns her head and falls instantaneously silent. I think she might be offended. I close my eyes, irritated. Why can't I manage to have a normal conversation with her? Me, who's never had social problems before? If I like someone, I'm almost always able to get on their good side. I used to play that to my advantage, back when I was a kid and concerned with being the best at everything. I clear my throat.

"So…Laura...where'd you grow up?" I ask her. I know her name from when Wolverine introduced her—a very, very long time ago—but I haven't used it much, and since the Camps I've pretty much just called her X, since that's what Santo calls her.

X looks at me again. "The facility," she says, as if this is self-explanatory.

"Oh, right," I say. My head throbs, and the mushy contents whirl for a few moments. I feel dizzy and nauseous. Think, I order myself. Something that will actually get her talking. "I remember that now. You must've had a rough childhood."

She says nothing. I assume that means I'm an idiot. "Do you wanna tell me about it?" I offer.

"No," she says.

I sigh. "Okay, how about…what kind of things do you like?"

X thinks about this for a few moments. "Food," she says. "And water."

Give me a break, I groan inwardly."Oh yeah?" I ask, trying to sound like this is genuinely illuminating and I'm fascinated by her. "What kind of food?"

"As long as it is edible I do not care," she says, a little stiffly. "That is why I suggested—"

"Yeah, yeah." I squeeze my eyes shut, afraid they're about to shoot out of my skull like projectiles. Or maybe they'll pop first, like two bloody balloons. Would there be a spray? Would it be a relief? Maybe I should pick this conversation up at another point in time. We might be dead then, and I'll regret it, I think, and look at her again. "I want to talk to you, but I have no idea how," I say bluntly.

She returns my look warily. "We are talking," she says, probably wondering if I've suffered head trauma. She's not too far off, but I don't think I have a concussion. Or much of one, at least. Maybe just a little. Fuck if I know anymore. I couldn't be in more pain if someone started beating on the back of my skull with a crowbar.

"No, I mean…talk talk." I shift my legs. Those are sore too. It's nice, kind of, to be balanced in pain, to have both ends hurting. Counterpain. If my legs hurt worse, they might cancel each other out and I could just relax. I would gleefully slit my own mother's throat for a bottle of ibuprofen or whiskey and a mattress right now. Or all three "I know nothing about you…which is crazy. How long have we been friends now?"

"Fifteen years, three months, fifteen and a half days," she replies, almost immediately.

I blink. "You've kept track?" I can never figure out how she counts these things. You could stick her with a cure dart, blindfold and bind her up and lock her away in a car trunk…and she could still tell you what time it is in Cairo and Beijing.

X turns her head to look straight. "Yes," she says. It sounds like an admission. I think for a moment, about back when we met. I have a picture in my head: a kind of shy-looking girl, with big green eyes and messy black hair. And a definite Goth edge. She seemed mysterious but I was in too shitty a period of my life to care about hers.

I tilt my head, and try to jog my memories. It's hard—it's all mucked up with the mansion being attacked over and over, and Xavier dying, and Utopia, and the Phoenix, and the Camps, and my hands, and living like a rat—but I vaguely recall that X used to follow me around like a puppy for a couple of years after we were briefly introduced. I hadn't really paid much attention to her, since she was ten levels of weird and Sofia started turning to me for support as her friends died and scattered. X stopped doing it after a while, and so I forgot. The apocalypse took precedence.

"Why did you used to follow me around?" I ask. I'm pretty sure I know the reason, but maybe it'll get her into a conversation. We can both laugh about how stupid we used to be, me the little jock punk who couldn't imagine life beyond high school (except for being a super hero), and her the Emo freak who I couldn't fit into any of my preconceived people-boxes. I don't keep those anymore, since I'm probably more fucked up inside than she is now.

"I don't want to talk about this," she says promptly—and I see that she looks vulnerable again, for the second time this night.

"That was ages ago," I say, giving her an encouraging and what I hope is a friendly smile. "You had a crush on me, didn't you?"

X's eyes bulge slightly, and then she closes them and holds her shoulders very square and her nostrils flaring. I have quite obviously hit the mark. I feel like laughing, for the first time in a few months—since Santo got stuck in a doorway on a food grab and ended up wearing the frame for a while. I don't, though. I think she's embarrassed that I called her out on it. "Don't worry…I mooned after Jean Grey and Ms. Frost when I first got to the school," I say, thinking that maybe if I relate with her, she'll be more at ease. Once upon a time I probably would have done the exact opposite—lorded it over her and used the information to my advantage—but that time is over. It ended with my childhood. "I was even convinced at one point that I would get Grey to leave her husband for me."

X says nothing. And she does not relax. At all.

I sigh. "Laura—come on. I'm not mad at you…or weirded out…I swear. I was only trying to get to know you better, to—"

"To confirm that I am not a robot?" she asks, unable to keep the anger out of her voice.

I look at her, and see the fire in her eyes. Even in the dim light that my hand is providing. "I thought I was forgiven," I say patiently, even though I'm not surprised. Women don't just forgive and forget, as I have had the opportunity to learn firsthand from Sofia, the champion grudge-holder.

X says nothing, just watches me.

"I believe you," I say. "I know you care about us. You've proven yourself over and over. You're one of us…I just said something stupid, in the moment. Like I often say to Santo when he gets annoying, you know?" I wince, at having reminded myself of Santo again. I need to stay calm, carry on and let my head rest so I can find him and put him back together. All the King's horses and all the King's men, I hear in my head. Some old Nursery Rhyme.

"I am not one of you," X says, watching me warily.

"Yes you are." I frown at her, disturbed. I didn't know she felt excluded. "Of course you are."

She says nothing. I lean my head against the wall again. "I know you care," I repeat tiredly, almost to myself. My voice sounds wheezy and rough, kind of like a death rattle. Swallowing all that blood earlier made me thirsty, and I wish I had a drink of water. "You find us food…you stand watch…and I count every time you take a shot for us—"

"For you," X says, intensely. I look at her and see that she is still watching me—also intensely. My eyebrows raise slightly as I try to figure out what she means, but she is moving across the gap between us. She kneels in front of me, her hands splayed on the knees of my worn-out jeans as she looks me directly in my eyes. "For you," she repeats, a little more softly.

I realize that maybe I know even less about her than I've thought. Even as pained and exhausted as I am right now, her meaning is coming through pretty clear. That crush I was teasing her about earlier isn't dead. I swallow, and shift slightly, not really knowing what to do. Her touch tingles gently even through the fabric, but my conscience is also keenly aware of Sofia sleeping just a few feet away.

"I…" my eyebrows draw together. She looks down at my knees, and I realize that maybe she didn't mean to approach me, to proposition me. Maybe she couldn't help herself. I feel bad for a moment at automatically assuming she would ask me to do something wrong, and I reach out and cup her downturned chin in my lightly glowing fingers. "Thank you," I say, hoping that won't hurt her. I don't think it does, but she leans her cheek my hand slightly, her eyes sliding shut—like she has imagined this for a long time, and wanted it—and at that moment I am inexplicably reminded of the way Sofia crunches down her disgust when I touch her. My fingers remind her of dead, cold, pathetic things she's seen rotting on the sides of the road.

I don't know what X thinks, but from the slight upward tilt of her lips suggests it's not that. She looks up at me again—and I know it's not that. She's thinking about something more alive. I hesitate for a split second—almost stopping myself—but then again I've never been the kind of guy to not take what I want, and I've just decided, just like that, that I want her. I don't know if it's out of spite toward Sofia, or out of actual desire for X, or out of the fact that I very nearly almost died a few times earlier today. I pull her up against me and tilt my head as I kiss her, getting more enthusiastic as I go along. It's not like I haven't noticed that she has a great body.

I suppose—in the back of my head—I assumed that it was that it was going to suck somehow, and I wouldn't do it again. X is so mechanical about everything else she does. Or else that it would be a one-time thing, that we'd mutually agree it couldn't happen because of the group, because we need each other to survive and what we're doing now threatens that survival. We don't have room for drama and hurt feelings. But what I didn't expect was it to feel great, and what I really didn't expect was for her to suddenly drop every guard in her mind, and I mean everything. Like she's naked.

I'm suddenly inside the abyss that I had wondered about before, and it's filled with a blur of vibrant memories, deep connections and incredibly potent sensations. There's moving pictures (the most detailed memories I've ever seen), there's gentle glows that represent feelings (what the fuck, I've never seen that), there's tendril-like connections everywhere (she really thinks of Santo as a brother? And Cessily as a sister? She would die for any of us at any minute), but I'm too overwhelmed by what she's directing at me to look at any of this. I can't come close to describing it but I'll try. It's this kind of throbbing need that fills her head-to-toe. It's this deep loyalty and devotion that makes me feel like I'm some kind of religious experience for her. It's this strict sense that she has no right to ask anything of me because I have not chosen her. It's the bitter victory of my survival, and the burning of a deep sacrifice in what she's done to achieve it. It's the intense knowledge that she would do anything I ask, even destroy herself if it would please me.

I grab her by the shoulders and push her away, startled, my heart pounding rapidly, my eyes wide. "What the fuck?" I hiss at her, when I can finally form words again, when I've finally realized I'm back in my own head.

Laura—I don't think I'll ever call her X again—gives me an uncertain look. "You…you started it," she says uncertainly. I realize she is referring to the kiss.

"No, the—" I struggle for words. "You love me," I finally accuse her. I think this is the word for it, but it sounds like a severe understatement.

Her eyes widen. "I—I am sorry," she says. "I forgot…I forgot to block…"

"What?" I ask, my voice still sharper than I intend.

"Your telepathy…I did not think…" she lowers her head. "I am sorry. It will not happen again."

"You block me out?" I ask, a little less angrily. I didn't realize it was something she is consciously doing—I thought she had a natural resistance to telepathy. She nods. "I did not want you to…" she pauses. "To have to hear my thoughts. The others are enough."

I lean my head back against the wall, close my eyes. My head is throbbing again like a motherfucker, and if I thought I was dying before, I'm really dying now. I consider crawling over to the sewage and making myself puke, but that'd be a waste when we don't know how long we'll be down here. Laura backs away—to the other side of the doorway—and turns her back to me. I don't say anything. My heart's still beating like I ran a marathon.

I close my eyes and try not to think about being in Laura's head.