Truth is Overrated: I was a late bloomer. An old man swooped in and then dropped me into the crazy world of his School for Mutants my senior year of high school. To the surprise of everyone else, I turned out all right. It's been a long time since I called the Institute home, but now I'm back and I think I might be here to stay. Sequel to Normalcy is Overrated.
Disclaimer: The X-Men, SHIELD, the Avengers, the Brotherhood of Mutants, and any other familiar characters are not my property. I claim no ownership of them. They are the creation and property of their creators and the rich assholes that control their every movement. I simply like to toy with them.
The truth is overrated. – Paul Westerberg
~Chapter Thirty-Seven~
We knew five minutes out that something was very, very wrong at the Institute. In spite of our attempts to hail the others, we'd gotten no response. Not a single person had replied, and that left us all in a state of mixed confusion and frustration. Though we argued about the benefits and the risks, we ultimately agreed that landing the X-Jet in the hangar was the best option.
Given the Institute's refined security system, approaching the grounds by foot or by air would be difficult. Though we were all familiar with the security system itself, none of us were capable of perfectly dodging every motion and heat sensor that was installed for the safety of the students and staff.
But, once we were in the hangar, we were also in the lower levels of the Institute. The structure of the Institute is rock solid, the lower levels more so. Logan's enhanced senses couldn't penetrate the thick walls that separated the hangar from the upper floor - let alone the walls that separated the hangar from the rest of the lower level.
"I told you, I'm fine," Vivian hissed as she jerked her arm out of Logan's. I noticed him wince even as she shuffled down the ramp. Though her injuries were still severe - several were still open and oozing blood - Vivian insisted that she not be left behind on the X-Jet. In spite of Logan's worries, I'd given her one of my handguns and an extra magazine of ammunition. Pale and shaky, she glanced around the hangar warily. "What now?"
I met Logan's gaze and he looked towards the large silver door that separated the hangar from the main corridor. He shook his head and I lifted one shoulder in a shrug of agreement.
He climbed the few steps to the door and began to examine it thoughtfully. Warily, I motioned for everyone else to stay back regardless of whatever he might find. After approximately a minute, he slowly shook his head and quietly opened the door. I held my breath until he stepped out into the corridor and then stepped back inside to motion us to follow in his wake.
Adrenaline coursing through my body, I bounced up the few steps and hurried out into the corridor quietly. Jubilee stayed directly behind me, and the others trailed just behind her. I kept my breathing level and tried not to show my own anxieties as I gazed around thoughtfully.
"Neither of the in-use warning lights are activated," Jubilee pointed out with a gasp. "Like, that doesn't make any sense. Lockdown means-"
"We all know what it means, Jubes," Johnny interrupted gruffly. She speared him with a haughty look, but didn't comment further when he dragged his fingers through his hair. "It's dead quiet down here. Maybe everyone is upstairs?"
I couldn't even begin to think of a good reason for everyone to have ignored the lockdown to venture upstairs. Jean and Scott hadn't magically turned back up, or the others would have informed us.
"Given the fact that it looks like at least one of the SRU members betrayed us – though not finding a body probably means they're both in on it - I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that was just the tip of the iceberg. Safety is our primary concern."
"Danielle is correct. Our students and our friends are of the utmost importance. We shall not put them at risk." Her eyes widened suddenly and Ororo glanced down the hallway towards the Medical Bay. "Kurt?"
"Stay here," I ordered everyone with a shake of my head. I hadn't considered the fact that both Kitty and Kurt had been resting in the Medical Bay when we had left. I broke into a full-out run down the hallway and my mind raced with the possibilities. The doors swished open and I jumped back in alarm to duck out of the reach of a scalpel as it sliced towards me. "Whoa!"
There was a puff of blue smoke and then Kurt Wagner appeared, scalpel in one hand and the tubing used for iv lines in the other. His eerie yellow eyes were filled with rage that immediately faded to confusion and then relief when he finally recognized us as friend rather than foe.
"Mein gott, I am so sorry. I thought you were one of them," he hastened to explain, his German accent thick with worry. He lowered the scalpel to his side and heaved a shaky breath warily. "I thought you might be them."
A sound similar to that of a muffled groan caused me to push Kurt Wagner aside to sweep into the Medical Bay. I scoured the room, took notice of the overturned beds and equipment, and spotted a lithe figure laying on the floor with a bloody gauze pressed against her side. Fueled by rage, I kicked an overturned bed out of my way, sending it skidding noisily across the floor, and crouched next to Kitty quickly.
When she opened her eyes to stare up at me, I silently vowed to myself that I would make every single person that had betrayed us pay. Somehow, someway.
"I phased the two guys down and left them, but one got a shot off. Just grazed me." She swore when I tried to tug the gauze away to survey the damage. I heard footfalls behind me and spared a glance for the others as they filed into the room, Kurt in the lead with Wolverine trailing just behind him. "Hey Wolvie," she murmured, managing a half-grin for her mentor.
Jubilee and Bobby knelt next to Kitty to survey her wounds and listen to her tale of terror quickly while Ororo spoke quietly to Kurt and John stood sentry at the closed doors. I balled my hands into fists and rose to my full height and set about righting several of the beds and some of the equipment. My hands trembled with repressed rage and frustration and I fought the temptation to tear out of the room to venture to the upper levels of the Institute.
Given how little I knew about the whole situation, I wasn't sure how wise it would be to simply jump straight into trouble.
"Put Viv over here," Jubilee ordered gruffly, quickly stripping one of the upright beds and placing fresh linens on it. "Did you hear me, Wolvie? I don't think I was stuttering!"
The temperature in the room seemed to rise several degrees as the feral mutant stalked across the room to gently place his love on the bed in question. He carefully tugged off her shoes and eased her under a thin blanket, and he barely flinched when Jubilee, donned in latex gloves, inserted an iv line into Viv's wrist. I winced a bit and then mentally reminded myself that all of the active X-Men were required to learn the basics in case of an emergency. Jubilee, like everyone else in the room – except Kurt, to my knowledge – had the basic ability to insert an emergency line for fluids. Among other medical skills, of course.
To my surprise, Bobby helped Kitty to her feet and promptly deposited her into a bed next to Vivian's. Though the brunette was unhappy, she didn't argue when he removed the gauze on her side to examine the wound. He looked over his shoulder, met my gaze, and nodded with obvious relief. It was only a graze.
"Barricade them in here as best as we can," I suggested blithely, intent on discovering the true depth of the shit we were going to be wading through soon. "Kurt, are you good to go? We could use you."
Ororo gently grasped his forearm and the tubing in his hand dropped to the floor soundlessly. He lowered his gaze to the floor and I watched his blue lips move, but heard no words. After a short beat, his yellow eyes met mine and he inclined his head ever so slightly.
While they worked on maneuvering the two hospital beds so that they were well out of the way and as defensible as possible, I tried to wrap my head around all of it. During the short flight back to the Institute, I had tried to emotionally remove myself from the situation to look at it all clinically. In spite of my own ties to everyone and everything, I had tried to look at everything like an active case.
SHIELD protocol would have me reporting my findings to my superior, Fury, and contacting an analyst to seek out any further information. The analyst, and his or her assistants, would scour databases to find details on the attack in New York including security camera surveillance and more. With the analyst and SHIELD's deep pockets and firepower, I'd approach the Institute in the stealthiest manner possible to reduce the risk of casualties.
Fuck SHIELD, I thought with an angry shake of my head. Whatever had happened, I couldn't trust anyone in SHIELD, not until I got to the bottom of it all. When it came down to a matter of loyalties, I'd proven to SHIELD and to myself that my true loyalties would always lay with Charles Xavier and the X-Men.
"Our only option is the elevator. That means that we're going to be walking straight into whatever the hell is up there." I fisted my hands at my sides and found myself staring up at the ceiling in frustration. Given my knowledge of the architecture of the Institute, I knew how reinforced its structure was, especially that of the lower levels. Getting up through the elevator shaft was always an option, but it wouldn't be as stealthy given our numbers. "But that doesn't mean that we have to go in unprotected."
So, four precious minutes later, we were crowded together in the large elevator, all positioned behind a sheet of thick bulletproof glass. Wolverine, with the assistance of the adamantium claws he possessed that were capable of cutting through any manmade substance, had destroyed the windscreen of the smallest jet in the hangar. Storm had been alarmed at my suggestion, but had reluctantly agreed that the jet in question had been out of commission for several years and would likely be used as scrap for the others in the near future. She, and the others, had even tugged on vests over their uniforms, decreasing my sense of worry only slightly.
"I never realized how damn slow this elevator was before," Pryo bit out angrily, shifting his weight from foot to foot. The confined space did little for Storm's claustrophobia, but she stood regally between Wolverine and me, her arms at her side and her eyes cast towards the sky. Somewhere, far off in the distance, I thought I heard the rumble of thunder. "I'm gonna burn these mothers down, Dani. Friends of yours or not, if they've hurt my girls…"
The Wolverine rumbled a dark and deep growl that caused the hairs on the back of my neck to stand up in alarm. My heart raced and my breath fanned out and shifted the weight of the glass in my left hand. Since I was without a doubt the strongest of the group, I'd been elected to carry the glass in front of us like a human shield. Using his claws, Wolverine had created a small circular hole large enough for my fist so that I could hold the glass high enough to protect us from ankle up.
While it would deflect gunfire, it meant that I relied almost entirely on my teammates. I didn't like the idea of relying on them for much of anything given the dire situation, but there was simply no other option.
An electronic ping announced our arrival on the main level and a fresh rush of adrenaline coursed through me instantly. I heard Nightcrawler praying under his breath behind me, but I ignored him as the doors quietly swished open and revealed an empty side hallway.
Wolverine made a jutting forward motion with his gloved hand and I nodded in agreement before slipping quietly into the hallway. I searched high and low, seeking the telltale sign of a red light or anything electronic that would signify dangerous tech left behind by the SRU. I saw nothing in our immediate vicinity, but what troubled me was the fact that I also heard nothing.
Where is everyone? Did they take the others off-campus already?
Would it make it easier or more dangerous if they were already off-campus? I wasn't sure, and I couldn't even begin to imagine the kind of destruction the remaining X-Men would cause in their goal to retrieve their friends and loved ones. It would be nearly cataclysmic for everyone and everything between the X-Men and their friends.
We rounded around and around through the hallways, steps light and careful as to make no noise. The Wolverine's lips curled into an angry snarl and he pointed towards the main entrance of the Institute suddenly, redirecting us towards an area we'd agreed to save for last. His body language alone made me wonder what his enhanced senses had picked up, but we couldn't risk communicating with more than hand signals.
He signaled that he heard multiple assailants, smelled recently-fired weaponry, smelled a great deal of blood – whose he wasn't certain – and that he recognized several friendly targets. In spite of his enhanced senses, however, he couldn't even begin to explain how many of the Institute's residents were gathered in the grand foyer.
With no other real option in sight, we boldly strode forward and halted together, a force to be reckoned with. The tension in the room skyrocketed and I felt my body tense and my chest tighten in pure rage. The majority of the student body was lined up on the main stairway, and it took only a glance to confirm that their hands were bound behind their backs with zip-ties. Colossus, the nearly-impenetrable last line of defense for the world's most powerful telepath, lay curled into a tight ball at the base of the stairs. Though the puddle of blood beneath his skull was small, it was large enough to garner serious concern.
The other members of the X-Men all appeared to be accounted for, but they were mostly similarly bound and restrained like the student body. Fanned around the base of the stairs, the man at the center of their semicircle was none other than Charles Xavier, and he held a small girl on his lap.
"I figured you would find a way to still show up."
Rage, pure and hot, filled me to the very core. After everything that had happened, I had thought it impossible for me to feel rage of any higher magnitude. But, the sight of a dozen SRU agents, most with their weapons trained on either the X-Men or the students of the Xavier Institute, left me frothing at the mouth.
At the front of the rag tag collection stood none other than Kurt Morgan. His dark eyes lit up with warmth, sick and polluted warmth, and he bowed his head slightly in greeting. I smelled the ozone building in the air, a harsh crescendo of power gathering that was almost immediately gone. The air smelled stale and I heard Storm gasp somewhere behind me before the reality of the situation crashed over me.
I howled in pain as the heavy windscreen fell to the floor, cracking the wide wooden planks of the hardwood floor. Tiny shards of glass cut into my hand as I ripped my fist free of the small carrying hole that the Wolverine had carved in the windscreen so that I could carry it. As a group, we collectively jumped back in alarm as the windscreen fell towards us. It slammed into the floor with a deafening thud that caused the members of the student body to wince in response.
"Hands above your heads where I can see them!"
The Wolverine howled and rushed forward regardless of the serious tone that Kurt Morgan had used while issuing the order. I guarded my facial expression and refused to wince as the hail of bullets pierced through the weak areas of the Wolverine's vest and his uniform. The inhuman sound that escaped his chest was nothing short of hair-raising, but the SRU's agents were trained, in large part by me, to face the scariest mutants in existence. The Wolverine, in lamest terms, was among the worst of them all.
I noticed the only unfamiliar face in the crowd of SRU agents and realized that he held no weapon in his hand. While he was garbed in the standard uniform, he was small in stature, nearly gaunt, and certainly wasn't capable of the rigorous physical demands that the position required. Ignoring the blood oozing from my knuckles and the side of my hand, I scrutinized the man quickly and came to an uncomfortable realization: we'd faced something like him before.
"Wolverine!" I shouted, causing the stumbling man to stop in his tracks. Though his body was littered with half a dozen wounds, those not stopped by his uniform or his vest, he was bleeding weakly. That meant that he would probably survive despite the fact that his healing ability was effectively shut off for the time being. "They've brought another man in a suit. This one's just wearing a uniform."
His eyes were crazed and more than a little bloodshot, but I saw the realization as it finally dawned upon him that he wasn't healing. He breathed heavily, his chest rising and falling in a shaky way that was a true indication of just how badly injured his body was. He examined the man in question and then tilted his head towards me to meet my gaze levelly.
"It's about time you've come to your senses, Evans. Keep your little Wolverine on a leash. I would hate for this to get any uglier. Put your hands in the air where we can see them. All of you. Especially you, Wolverine."
Jubilee cursed under her breath and I glanced to the side when she stepped up next to me. Her eyes were bright with unshed tears, but she looked pissed rather than terrified. There was no way for me to tell her that she couldn't worry about Piotr, not right now. But, her bright blue eyes didn't even seem to falter, to dance over to her unconscious boyfriend. Her focus was reserved solely for the leader of the SRU, and she looked ready to rip him limb from limb.
"Good. Let's not try anything and we can talk about this like rational adults." Morgan dipped his head forward slightly and four men holstered their weapons and crossed to gather behind us. I slowly lifted my hands into the air and ignored the sounds of muffled chatter behind me as St. John promised to personally barbecue all of their important reproductive organs as soon as he had the opportunity. Storm was noticeably silent, but Nightcrawler prayed quietly for our safety.
The agents shoved the bound X-Men past me, leaving me standing with my hands in the air and a single agent behind me. I felt his gloved hand come down to rest on my shoulder, and then he used his other hand to grab my left hand by the wrist. As he shoved my left hand behind my back, a move practiced by officers everywhere, I exhaled slowly.
I didn't have superhuman strength, supersonic flight abilities, or regenerative healing with the uniformed mutant in the room. Like the man in the suit in Hawaii, his mutant ability negated the mutant abilities of others. He either had a particular radius that he could effect, which seemed unlikely because neither Storm or Iceman or the others had noticed any difference in their abilities when we'd stepped off the elevator – or he could consciously decide who to affect. The latter seemed more likely, but I wasn't willing to take any chances that he might spontaneously decide that he wasn't interested in continuing along with the SRU's plans.
In spite of the absence of my dangerous mutant abilities, I was still a force to be reckoned with. Due to my training as a police officer and, later, a SHIELD agent, I was skilled in defensive maneuvers. Thanks to the wounded woman in the Med Bay, I felt comfortable with a number of types of martial arts. Furthermore, I knew exactly how to fight back against someone trying to cuff me, as I'd been trained how to avoid having a suspect fight back against me while I cuffed them.
I spun around sharply and brought my right shoulder up to wriggle out of the agent's grasp. His hold on my left wrist weakened, but was broken only when I brought my elbow back against his side. There was no point, after all, in hitting him in his solar plexus. I knew the SRU uniforms and I knew that the built-in bulletproof vest was weakest on the sides and inches above the navel. With that thought in mind, I slammed my head back, catching the agent by surprise with a head butt.
Pivoting on one foot, I grabbed the strap of the front of his uniform and spun myself around so that my chest was pressed against his back. I inhaled and drew the standard-issue Ka-bar knife from its sheath on his uniform. Pressing the sharp blade against his delicate throat, I used his body as a shield and looked around his head only briefly to meet the Wolverine's gaze.
"Call your men off, Morgan, or Kuttler is going to need a closed casket ceremony!"
The laughter that rumbled in response was laughter that I knew. I suddenly and vividly recalled smoking cigars with the boys in a rec room on the Helicarrier while we argued about baseball and played poker. I remembered a mission gone south in Cambodia, when SHIELD had been alerted to the presence of a dangerous militia group headed by several young mutants. They hadn't been willing to surrender in spite of our superior forces. One of the more powerful mutants, a young man that could cause the earth to tremor in response to his mutant ability, had caught me off guard.
The Superhuman Response Unit's code of warfare stated that we were to try to take any hostiles alive. But, when the lives of any member of the Unit hung in the balance, we had carte blanche.
The young man had taken me off guard and had taken one of the youngest members of the SRU hostage, a gun to his throat. Kaiden, since no longer part of the SRU and stuck doing analyst work, had looked at me with terror. There had been no hesitation when I'd lifted my sidearm and fired to kill, instantly killing the mutant with a single shot to his head.
The flight back to where the Helicarrier had been orbiting somewhere high above Canada had been difficult. I'd struggled with the guilt, though it certainly hadn't been the first fatality of my career. But, those young man's scared eyes haunted me. It had been Morgan, the next day while we'd been drinking and playing poker that had pulled me aside and reminded me that it was all part of the mission.
"If you hadn't fired when you did, Kaiden's family and his girlfriend would be getting a visit filled with apologies. Instead, tonight he gets to Skype his girlfriend and thank God he's got another day, another chance. You did the right thing."
At the time, Morgan had seemed like the closest thing I'd had to a friend, an accomplice of sorts, in the SRU. He was the commander of the Unit, with me acting as his superior due to my title as liaison. But, he hadn't minded; at least, he hadn't seemed to mind.
"You know exactly what my response to your threat will be, Evans. You know how this will play out better than anyone. After all, you helped to draft the rules that we swore to uphold." I was prepared, but still flinched when I felt Kuttler's body jerk sharply. I'd ducked my head in anticipation, but my cheek and forehead had still been splattered by blood and tiny chunks of brain matter from the exit wound. "Your human shield is completely pointless now, especially since he's dead."
Valid point notwithstanding, I kept Kuttler's body in front of me for several seconds before I let it slump forward and onto the ground unceremoniously. I heard several sounds of protest from the students, but didn't dare look in their general direction.
"You know the vow that must be spoken before you are allowed to join the Unit. Every man and woman in my unit know the risks that they are likely to face any given day. Kuttler made an unforgivable error when he allowed you to use him as a shield; furthermore, you overpowered him even without your mutant abilities." Kurt Morgan shook his head once and gesticulated with gloved hands, his eyes unsurprisingly drawn to the ka-bar knife still clutched in my right hand. "You're no longer nearly invincible. One well-placed shot would be the end, and you know it."
"What you doing here?" I demanded levelly, quietly pushing away the rage that had been steadily building over the course of the day. "This isn't a spur of the moment attack against the X-Men, Morgan. I'm not stupid. You've been planning this for weeks and," I nodded towards the mutant that left all of the X-Men powerless, "this goes beyond tonight."
The pieces of the puzzle, still a little rough around the edges and hazy in the recesses of my mind, were gradually beginning to fall into place. But, the overall picture still didn't make any sense. How likely was it that after learning about what had happened in Hawaii that SHIELD had been able to locate a mutant with the same ability as the one that had nearly wiped out the X-Men and their guests? No mathematician, I decided that the chances of that being the case were slim to nil.
Had Fury betrayed me?
Morgan clapped his hands together a few times, slowly and lazily. "Bravo. I always wondered why you were assigned to the SRU in spite of your obvious… handicap. The whole purpose of the birth of our Unit was to face the superhuman threat head on. Between mutants and other ultra-powerful humans, I figured your involvement was meant as a practice test of sorts. But, you're a lot smarter than I would have ever given you credit for, Evans."
I gritted my teeth and risked a glance towards Xavier. He had obviously been manhandled severely, as there were red welts on his face, scattered from his forehead to his chin. His pristine suit was rumpled and had a few specs of blood spattered across it, but otherwise he looked uncompromised. The small girl in his lap squirmed nervously, and her wide eyes made me want to snap Kurt Morgan's spine in half. The youngest resident of the Institute, little Loraine was by far, in my opinion, the most innocent. So the fact that she was so confused, so scared, made the entire situation that much worse.
"We'd like for this to be resolved peacefully, but I'm not so sure that's a viable option at this point. Dr. Xavier, I'll ask you just this one last time… How do we access the Cerebro Files?"
I tried not to let any sign of recognition show on my face, but Morgan smirked slightly in response. In spite of my training and my willpower, I'd apparently let on that I knew of the existence of the Cerebro Files. I cursed myself mentally and wondered, yet again, if SHIELD had been behind everything all along.
If so, how did Essex fit into it all, and what did they want with Jean and Scott?
"I would hate to turn this into an unfortunate accident. We can set just a few charges and this place will go up in a huge ball of flames and everyone, every single person out there, will be under the impression that it was a gas line leak. Such a tragic accident, really, so many innocent children lost because you were foolish enough to try to deny me the one thing that I request of you."
"You're a bad, bad man!" Lori shouted and shook her fists in the air. "Grandpa Ex-aye-vee, tell him to go away!"
Morgan's lips twitched and something dark and malicious twisted his features into something practically inhuman. He took a step towards Xavier and I took a step towards him. Halting, he lifted a brow in challenge and I bared my teeth.
"You will give me access to the Cerebro Files, or I will personally execute every person in here. I think I'll start with this one."
He lifted his sidearm, chambered a round, and took aim at the small figure sitting on Xavier's lap. I was in movement instantly, and saw something out of the corner of my eye moving towards Lori at the same time. I drew back my arm and took aim, but didn't throw the knife as a howl escaped and stopped me dead in my tracks. It was too late. He'd already fired.
"Marie!"
Closer, she had thrown herself over Lori and Xavier, acting as a human shield. I heard St. John howling in rage and frustration, but he was quickly silenced following what sounded like a thump. Since he'd no doubt met the butt of a gun, he was likely out of commission. The high-pitched screams that met my ears were from the small figure trapped between her mother and Xavier, unable to do more than howl and cry in confusion as her own mother kept her pinned.
In spite of the black uniform she'd donned, the growing red spot on Marie's back was an obvious wet spot. I felt my chest constrict and I screamed at the top of my lungs as I pivoted on my heel and threw the knife in my hand with all of my strength. All of the agents near Morgan dove towards the floor, but I'd been anticipating that.
The playful grin on Baxter St. Croix's face was forever frozen in one of terror. Blood gushed with every beat of his heart from where the knife was imbedded in his esophagus, and it was only a moment or more before his eyes rolled back in his head and he bled out.
"You don't fuck with me or mine!" I drew my sidearm, flipped off the safety, chambered a round, and fired three times in rapid succession before the agents even realized I was armed. Moving swiftly, I positioned myself directly in front of Marie and continued to fire even as the agents attempted to scatter. Several managed to raise their own weapons, but I didn't even notice if they managed to fire them as I continued to unload the bullets in my magazine. "Get upstairs!" I ordered loudly over the ruckus, hoping that the students on the stairs would hear me and clear out.
The fewer possible casualties, the better.
Something hard and hot slammed into my left shoulder and my arm sagged down, so I shifted my grasp on my gun and fired it one-handed. At around the time the sixth bullet exited my gun, I heard gunfire from my side and realized that the Wolverine had wisely begun using the big .45 I'd ordered him to keep on his person.
I squeezed the trigger and realized I'd run out of ammo some time ago, and winced as I used my left hand to root around in my vest's pockets for an extra ammo magazine. Morgan threw a limp body off of him and fired wildly.
The mutant suit was nowhere in sight, but I was too focused on the task at hand to care too much. I couldn't risk that someone behind me getting shot, like Marie or any of the others that might still be there. So I stalked forward and continued to fire rapidly.
"I don't need my mutant powers to kick your ass!" He ran out of ammo and reached for an extra magazine, and I danced within reach and drew my foot back and kicked him under his chin. He flopped sideways onto his back and shook his head in an attempt to clear the daze that I had no doubt caused. "But trust me when I say that you better be damn grateful that I don't have the strength to rip your arm from your body. Because right this moment, I would. I would, Morgan. I would rip it clear off and beat the rest of your body black and blue!"
There was an animalistic roar that caused the hairs on the back of my neck to stand on end. I felt the gun drop from my hand as I pivoted on my heel, only to stare in confusion as one of the missing puzzle pieces grabbed the Wolverine by the throat and then slung him across the room. The air was smoky from the gunfight, but I still saw the light reflecting off of his eyes in the split second before his gaze met mine.
"Fuck."
I ducked when he swung a dangerous hand in my direction, but didn't have time to feel relieved that those razor-sharp talons hadn't pierced my skin before he brought his knee up and caught me in the chest. With a grunt, I threw myself to the side and flopped onto the floor in a painful roll, my injured left arm taking the brunt of my weight. When my vision blurred, I rapped my head against the floor to clear it and stared at the man charging towards me.
The Victor Creed I had come to know and care for was gone. There was no other way to put it – he was just gone.
Oddly enough, I was reminded of the black and blank look that he'd worn when I was still at student at the Institute and he'd attacked Logan and the rest of my group while on a trip in the mountains that had been geared towards survival and teamwork. But, back then we'd learned that Stryker, a military madman, had used an illegal and highly unstable serum to control the Sabretooth.
I wasn't so sure that history hadn't repeated itself.
He stomped a big foot down towards my head and I rolled hurriedly, throwing myself onto my chest and catching my weight with my right hand. I'd dropped my gun at some point, but I had another holstered, and I reached for it the moment I was on my feet.
"Dart them!"
I realized that someone had swept into the room behind Sabretooth, several someones, and I swore under my breath when they began to fire their weapons. Though I wasn't sure how many people remained in the huge foyer, I had to assume that it was more than just Logan and me. All I could do was send up a silent prayer that all of the students were well out of range and that someone had gotten Marie, Lori, and Xavier to safety.
The first two beads of heat pierced me in my upper thigh, and I didn't feel phased. I managed to pull my gun from its holster and used my mouth as a clamp so that I could chamber a round. When I leveled the weapon's sights on Sabretooth, however, I found myself hesitating.
With the mutant negating mutant powers of everyone in the vicinity, a well-aimed shot would mean permanent repercussions for the man in front of me. A double-tap to the chest would kill him. A shot to his leg might cause him to bleed out and die before the mutant was eliminated. A quick gut shot would be agonizing and could, yet again, lead ultimately to his death.
Frozen like a deer caught in the headlights of an oncoming semi-truck, I stared at the man that had taken me out to one of his favorite bars for food and a drink. How was it possible that it was even the same man that had driven me crazy for hours on end as we'd made frenzied and then, later, slow love all over the safe house apartment?
I fired two rounds, both went wide. Another sharp pain pierced through my veil of confusion and I realized that I'd taken another slug, this time to the throat. Dropping my gun, I clawed at my neck wildly and my fingers trembled as they closed around what was most definitely not a gunshot wound. Dazed, I stumbled back a few steps and blinked erratically as my vision swam. As I fell back onto the hard floor, I was startled to realize that I hadn't been shot.
I'd been tranquilized. Again.
Perhaps the adrenaline in my body fought against the strong tranquilizers, or maybe it was my will alone. Either way, I found the strength to roll over onto my side, but I couldn't do more than scoot a few feet weakly. The room shivered like rain streaming down a foggy window, and I couldn't make sense of what was up and what was down. The world was a dark and frightening place; the shadows hid remnants of nightmares and veiled fears.
As the tranquilizer surged through my system, I fought valiantly to remain conscious. Somewhere through the fog, I thought that I saw a familiar pair of eyes staring back at me. But the voices mixed together and melded into an ominous serpent-like voice that dragged me down into the deep and dark abyss.