"Landra," He called to her. "Es gibt die Leute hier, um dich zu sehen."
She walks down the long, winding staircase in a flood of light, stained from the grimy window that hovers above the landing. Her heart is tight and painful – breathing is difficult. Her young mind has already jumped to an ugly conclusion, that they have finally found her at the reaper has finally come to knock on her door.
It is time to go.
"Landra,"
She holds her breath as the final step looms, and her feet touch the ground. In a strange second of perplexed terror, she realises that no hands are rushing to grip her; no hands rushing to drag her away.
"Hello,"
She tears her eyes from the hardwood floor to daringly look up at the stranger's voice. She finds a welcoming man, with wise eyes examining her, and a kind gentle expression. He extends a hand for her to shake. She grudgingly accepts.
Her guardian is behind him, as Landra shakes hands with her future.
"My name is Charles Xavier, Landra," Her future greets. "It's very nice to meet you."
"Landra!"
I sit forward abruptly as his voice rips me from the dream, from my memories, and with terror written across my face I realise we're somewhere totally alien. A landscape I am a stranger in.
"Wake up. We're here," Logan says through the open car window, and I stumble on asleep legs from the vehicle.
My eyes strain in the bright and intrusive sunlight, as I gaze across the expansive property in Mexico to see the dusty sliver of forgotten wasteland that the last dregs have been left to inhabit – forgotten by time itself, with only the sun as watchman over their laboured existences.
It's a far cry from the lush grasses and deep, rich forests of Westchester.
I follow Logan in his tattered suit to presumably the main house (a shack that once stood as a warehouse) to find another body inside. I recoil as I find the face of Caliban sitting amongst the rags and rusted fixtures, the albino harbinger of death.
"What the hell is this sack of crap doing here?" I demand with an aggressive snap, Caliban recoiling from my anger. It brings an unnerving sense of glee that despite any fall from grace I might have endured, my presence still instructs a reaction.
"He's taking care of Charles," Logan explains, dumping a small plastic bag. Caliban examines it unhappily.
"He's taking care of Charles? No wonder you're so desperate for me," I scoff as Caliban eyes me worriedly with those large egg-yolk coloured eyes of his.
"Caliban can't keep the seizures away with just this," The albino mutant murmurs, examining the dosage Logan provided – the latter of which makes an impatient and angry grunt.
"It's all I can get, okay? It's not like I was in the position to argue with the guy,"
At this rate, we aren't in the position to argue with anyone; let alone people willing to help.
"Where is he, anyway?" I ask to silence, as Caliban and Logan look at one another. An icy bead of sweat rolls down my spine, despite the intense heat – is Charles really that bad?
I take the food tray and sedatives from Caliban's hands, suppressing a shiver at the thought, 'How many of us have you led them to? Let them kill?'
Logan unlocks the overturned water tower, its rusted shell rattling in the stiff desert breeze as I step inside the cool, sheltered interior.
It smells like death; stale air.
"Is…is it you?" A voice, like Marley's ghost, rattles inside the cylinder as my eyes traverse over the cluttered potted plants – the only source of colour in this godforsaken dust bowl – and the ancient wheelchair on its side, before resting on the hospital gurney.
There he lies like a corpse positioned for their wake and my mind is cast back to the final step on my childhood staircase, the point of no return, before boldly stepping toward him.
I do not recognise him all that much, his once recognisable face aged by sagging flesh and peppered with white stubble. Even his clothes, dirty and stained, betray the man he once was.
Is the mansion like him, in this state? Left to ruin, with only the ivy that cling to its hollow corpse, like Logan and I cling to Charles for familiarity, to remember it by?
"Who are you?" He asks of me, bleary eyes investigating my face gingerly. My chest tightens, the acid in my gut churning.
"You know damn well who she is," Logan says impatiently, snatching the medication from the tray. He pulls on dollar store glasses, the tag swinging from the left arm, and Charles smiles charmingly at me in a dazed sort of way that only those truly wandering can muster.
"Don't they make him look young?"
I attempt a smile of confirmation, but it hurts my cheeks.
Logan does his part with the drugs and the tray Caliban pushed into my hands is up next. It's laden with mushy food, potatoes and overly boiled string beans, but food is food I suppose as Charles sits up in anticipation (or more, because Logan makes him).
"I recognise your face," He continues to try and place me in the jumbled web of memories he calls his mind, and I feel his fingers inside my brain trying to pick it apart; remember any trace of himself inside me. He snags on something. "Where is he? Where is Erik?"
"I don't know," I admit softly, skewering a bean and positioning the fork to his mouth expectantly. Charles grows distressed at my ignorance, or rather frustrated at the fact he just can't remember and slaps the cutlery violently from my hand. It ricochets, a sharp metallic clang, and I wince.
"You're a liar, a fucking liar like your father, Landra," Charles abuses me and his face twists into a scowl of contempt. The moment he recalls who I am, he finds it fit to belittle me.
"Hey! Knock it off," Logan warns him, Charles scoffing something nasty and unintelligible before crossing his arms petulantly.
I'm shaken, I can't deny that, and I overthink the brief encounter while sitting in the main warehouse in darkness and shielded from the unwelcome sun. Beside me, Caliban cleans with a filthy rag. I can feel his yolk eyes on the back of my skull.
"You know he's buying a boat," Caliban tells me. I focus on my watery soup and stale bread. He neurotically shifts on his feet. "He'll leave us here, take the old man and go."
I pick at the hard bread in my hands.
"I'd cut my losses and go," Caliban advises, his mouth close to my ear as I look boldly at him. He steps abruptly back.
"Then why don't you? Take your own advice," I challenge. He pauses, and I can practically see the cogs in his head turning at the realisation he has no real excuse for staying when there's so much risk attached. "That's what I thought."
Just like me, just like Logan and Charles, Caliban is desperate to remain amongst his own kind. Or at least what's left of it, as I hear Logan's tires screeching away from our little grubby sanctuary.
With the sound of receding wheels, an uneasy sensation rests on my shoulders, as I feel foreboding doom descend on us.
