Part 10 – Memory Loss
It was eight o' clock when Kari finally woke up, drowsy from the tranquilizer. She sat up, holding her head, wondering what had happened to make her fall asleep. She blinked a few times. It was completely dark in her room, no sunlight left to light it. She set her hand down and cried out. She had apparently set it down on what appeared to be another hand. She fumbled for the light switch, still yelling, making the other whatever it was shout as well. The light flicked on, blinding her. She shrank into the corner of her bed, holding both arms in front of her eyes in agony. Once she lowered them, she sighed and she felt her body slouch from her skepticism.
"God, John, what are you doing in here?" she asked with a frustrated sigh.
"I was sleeping, until you woke up and started screaming." He stood up, stretching his eyes and blinking. As usual, he scratched his head, running hands hand back and forth over his hair and messing it up. Kari smiled in her head. He kept his eyes half open as he turned his head sideways to look at the window, mentally noting it must be dark outside. It was then Kari noticed red marks on the side of his neck.
"What happened to you?" she asked, pointing out the marks. John looked down, expecting to see something.
"No, on your neck," Kari specified.
"Oh," he said. He felt his neck, and then had the whole incident flood back into his mind. His stomach plummeted and he froze.
"Uh," he said, almost stuttering, "Nothing, just a —"
He couldn't think of what to say. Kari cocked an eyebrow. He cleared his throat and tried to stray her off the subject.
"It's nothing," he insisted. He turned his head sharply the other way as raised voices came from the living room. He looked at Kari and they both stood up, coming out of the room. Kari went ahead of him down the hallway and halted so sharply he ran into her.
"Hey!" he exclaimed.
What Kari saw in front of her was the worst she had seen yet. Though it probably wasn't so for John, given he was involved in the last incident.
Bobby was thrashing where he lay, yelling and struggling against Rogue, Storm, Logan, and Jean. He appeared to be yelling out in some form of pain. Then, without warning, he managed to get one arm free from Logan's grip and grab him around the neck. Logan widened his eyes as slow lines of ice started spreading from where Bobby's fingers wrapped around him.
"STORM! JEAN! HELP ME!" he started choking. Storm, strangely enough to Kari, leapt onto Bobby and pried his arm free. Logan was having trouble breathing, seeing as Bobby had almost frozen his throat shut. Not knowing what else to do, Kari ran into the kitchen and turned the faucet onto "hot", filling a glass with hot water. She rushed to Logan, who surprisingly accepted it and started gulping it down, trying to free his throat of the cold. It was now that Bobby started shooting off spurts of ice spontaneously. Kari ducked to the side as a large beam shot at her and hit the wall.
"JEAN, DO SOMETHING!" Rogue yelled.
"WHY ARE YOU YELLING AT ME?" Jean argued.
"TRANQUILIZE HIM OR SOMETHING!" Kitty yelled. Kari had only just noticed her. She was on Jean's other side, trying to hold down one of Bobby's furiously kicking legs.
"I CAN'T! WE ONLY HAD ONE AND WE USED IT ALREADY!" Jean cried, frustrated.
"When did we have tranquilizers? And who did you use it on?" Kari asked.
Everyone stared at her for a moment. John made a swift movement of his hand slicing across his neck rapidly, motioning for them to not say anything. Logan raised an eyebrow until he felt Bobby's arm smack him sharply under the chin. He was crying out, and everything he touched would freeze instantly.
"How do we stop him?" John asked frantically.
Suddenly, Bobby started hacking. Rogue widened her eyes. He seemed to be choking, or having some type of difficulty breathing. He wheezed and his chest heaved sharply. He stopped struggling against the others, and just fell back onto the couch, breathing fast and panting. Once he stopped, Rogue ran to get him some water, which was soon steadily poured down his throat. His fever started creeping up again and everyone started dampening towels. Kari slouched over exhaustedly.
"I can't take much more of this," she mumbled.
"It's been worse," Kitty muttered.
"What?" Kari asked. Kitty suddenly realized her statement and covered up.
"I mean, well, HE hasn't been worse, I meant — uh — it'll probably GET worse."
John covered his eyes for a second and sighed. He gave her a small glance while shaking his head. Kari noticed and glanced at him. She looked at everyone suspiciously in turn and they all exchanged very slight guilty glances.
"What are you guys not telling me?" she asked slowly.
"Nothing," John insisted.
Almost as though right on cue, the front door made a small click as some one turned the knob and walked in wearing a slightly scruffy suit and holding a stack of rolled up blueprints. John gave a small sigh of relief, even though he didn't know who this stranger was. But Kari recognized him immediately.
"Dad!" she said surprisingly. He froze and dropped his papers all over the floor. He seemed to choke on his words as he tried desperately for the next minute or so to say something. Out of curiosity as to what happened to all of the noise suddenly, Kari's mom came out of her room and gave a great expression of relief at the site of Kari's father. She went to him quickly.
"What is she doing here?" he said out of the corner of his mouth, not taking his eyes off of his daughter. Everyone stood there for another two or three quite minutes as Kari's mom explained the whole situation to him. Or the situation as it was to her knowledge, anyway. With a still shocked and skeptical look, he nodded slowly at her sentences.
"And who on Earth are they?" he asked, continuing to speak out of the corner of his mouth. Another two minutes went by as she explained that as well. Soon, both parents were looking at Kari. She gave a slightly bashful expression and waved slowly.
"Hi dad," she said with a nervous tone.
"Hi," he answered back after a long hesitation.
Another thirty minutes later, Kari's parents had disappeared to their room and hadn't shown themselves again. Bobby was resting, and to everyone's surprise and gratefulness, Professor Xavier had awoken. He wasn't injured at all, and he seemed to be doing just fine. Jean provided him with a wheelchair that had been concealed on the ship, and he was relatively cheerful. By now it was almost nine o' clock, and Kari had confined herself to her computer screen again. Kitty had given Rogue a break, and took care of Bobby while she slept on Kari's bed. The "teachers" were all discussing whatever plans back on the ship, Mystique was resting on the living room floor beside the couch where Bobby lay, and John, strangely enough, was pacing back and forth in the warm night air on the grass in the front yard. He clicked his lighter back and forth with a steady breath, pondering what the hell he was doing there.
"I hear you're quite talented, 'John.'"
He looked up quickly and saw Magneto walking toward him with a friendly smile. John flicked his lighter shut and watched Magneto approach him. He was in the process of putting the lighter in his pocket when it flew out of his hand and into Magneto's.
"Tell me, John. Why are you here?" he asked, flicking the lighter open himself and looking at John through the tiny flame, as it was level with his eye.
"Because the school blew up?" John answered with a sarcastic eyebrow raised.
"No. I mean, why were you at the school in the first place?" Magneto corrected.
"Because I GO there?" he answered. Magneto flicked the lighter shut almost threateningly.
"Your past should not frustrate you, John. The things that are behind you no longer exist, and should not effect what you do now, or what your future holds."
John stared at him.
"You do not belong in a place, or with people that are holding you back. Your power should be free, as should you be to make your own choices. Don't let anyone hold you back. Do what you believe is right, and do things as you want to. Restrictions are useless. A boy like you should be limitless." He handed John back the lighter. John took it with slight skepticism, until his mind actually started registering the meaning of the older man's words.
People that are holding me back?
Kari rubbed her eyes vigorously and stared at the screen. "Your Search Did Not Match Any Documents" was the message glaring at her from the monitor. Taunting her as she dropped her head onto the keyboard, emitting a loud beep from the computer. She sighed and raised her head, covering her eyes in exhaustion.
"What the hell am I supposed to be looking for?" she grumbled to herself, "I've already found all the files I could on this Daren freak. What else is there to know?"
She wanted to quit searching, but she also wanted to continue. The information she had found was useful, but not very much. There had to be more. Something else he was hiding. More information on the virus, or blueprints to his extermination plan. There had to be SOMETHING.
Kari pushed back her chair and dropped her hands into her lap. She stood up and wandered down the hallway in search of something to snack on. She reached the end of the hallway and literally ran into John. They both jumped and backed against the wall to let the other by, saying "Sorry" at the same time. Kari scooted in front of him and watched him turn down the hallway as she went into the living room. She sighed and rubbed both her eyes with one hand. "Dear god," she thought irritably.
"How are you doing?" Kitty asked. Kari looked at her with a skeptical and exhausted expression.
"Swell," she answered, walking slowly into the kitchen. She opened the fridge and sighed. She grabbed an apple stored in one of the drawers and walked back into the living room, munching on it. She saw Kitty look at the hallway as she leaned against the counter. Kitty looked from the hallway to her with slightly raised eyebrows. Kari stopped chewing for a moment.
"What?" she asked.
Not knowing that Kitty was actually considering asking her about attacking John, she raised her eyebrows insistently.
"What?" she repeated when Kitty didn't answer. Kitty blinked suddenly. She suddenly came up with a new suspicion.
"Do you like him?" she asked slowly. Kari almost choked on the apple bits in her mouth. She cleared her throat and coughed.
"JOHN?" she asked back. Kitty nodded. "You're crazy."
"Oh please," Kitty interrupted, "It's practically written on your forehead."
"Oh, give me break." Kari rolled her eyes doubtingly and gave Kitty a cynical stare.
"Saying I like John is like saying you like Bobby," she added. Kitty kind of made a shifty eyed glance at Bobby lying on the couch, then Kari's mouth dropped open.
"You like Bobby!" she practically screamed.
"SHH!" Kitty said warningly.
"Are you serious?" Kari asked with a wide-eyed expression.
"Sort of," Kitty said with a shrug, "I don't know. But hey, if I do, guess who likes John." Kitty added this with a little snicker. Kari stuck her tongue out at her.
"Oh, shut up." Kari walked past a snickering Kitty and went back down the hallway.
Me like John, she thought to herself, She's crazy.
She went back to her computer and half surprisingly found John sitting in the other chair beside her computer.
"I thought you were outside," she said suddenly.
"You don't remember running into me in the hallway?" John asked. He was back to his old nonchalant expression, and shockingly, also back to his lighter flicking.
"Oh yeah," Kari said quietly. She shrugged and sat down at her computer, continuing to munch on the apple she held. As she ate, he leaned back in his chair and watched her. She looked out of the corner of her eyes suspiciously.
"What?"
"Do you ever feel," he started, "Like some one's holding you back?"
Kari raised her eyebrows a bit. "Well, I've never really known enough people, let alone have friends, that could possibly be holding me back. You could say I lack the necessities. Why?"
He stayed silent for the next few moments. Kari finished her apple and threw the remains in a trash bin under the desk.
Well, I guess she wouldn't. She doesn't even know she has a power yet, how COULD she feel like me?
"Did you ever," he tried, then stopped for a second, then continued, "Did you ever consider what it might be like, if you knew you had mutant powers?"
Kari dropped her hands into her lap and turned her chair towards him.
"John, I'm not going to say it again. I'm not a mutant, I DON'T HAVE ANY POWERS. Period. I'm just…I'm not like any of you."
"But what if you were?" he asked.
"There's no IF. There never will be, that's it. I'm NOT a mutant."
"Just bear with me here, please. What if you were?" he repeated.
Kari sighed and propped her head up on a fist, resting her elbow on the desk.
"Everything would connect," she answered simply. John leaned forward, his lighter open, with the flame lightly swaying back and forth.
"What do you mean?"
"The accident, I guess, the constant chain of events that my parents keep talking about, I don't know. The possibility of a mutant gene is the simplest answer. But I don't accept it. I'm not a mutant. There's no proof, no evidence. I mean, how can a mutant be born from a human family?" she added. John flicked his lighter shut after a pause.
"It is possible." He leaned back in the chair again, staring at his lighter.
"Oh really? Name one mutant with human parents." Kari said challengingly.
"Me," he replied, looking past the lighter and right into her eyes.