Note: The saw that Warren grabs is a Stryker saw, commonly used to cut bone in autopsies and such. I chose that particular saw because 1) I knew about it already (from Dr. William Maples' excellent book Dead Men Do Tell Tales) and I hate doing unnecessary research, and 2) the chief villain of the X-Men story "God Loves, Man Kills" is Reverend Stryker. Gotta love those
references. :)
Also, apologies for the jumpy timeline. It should straighten out after this chapter.
Though his bark cannot be lost,
Yet it shall be tempest-toss'd.
- 'Macbeth,' Act 1, Scene 3
EARLIER
Warren opened his eyes and immediately regretted it. The light stung, sending a sharp bolt of pain through his skull. Beyond that, it woke him up, and he remembered why he'd surrendered to unconsciousness in the first place. The kid... the fight in the sewer... Carol. He had a brief moment of panic before he recalled that Carol was okay. And boy, there was a story behind that; he needed to find her and get some answers.
He groaned and pushed himself up, eyes half-shut against the light - which, he could now tell, was just an ordinary overhead fluorescent. He wasn't surprised to find that he was wearing his Angel costume and nothing else; his civilian clothes had been lost early into the fight. Something was restraining his hands behind his back, and his wings had both been clamped so that he
couldn't spread them. The wings, at least, didn't bother him; it was similar to the harness he'd worn beneath his clothes all through prep school.
An experimental tug revealed that his wings were bound too tightly to squirm out of. Despite their size, the bones and musculature had remained extremely flexible - which was how he'd been able to cram them into a harness for years. Apparently whoever had captured him knew that. Just more bad luck, it seemed.
The tug also showed that his wings were chained to the wall. Squinting, he twisted into a sitting position and tried to figure out where exactly he was. The corner of a room somewhere. The floor beneath him was clean tile, and the walls were polished metal... not the sewer. It looked like a morgue. But morgues didn't have rows of cages and stainless steel equipment, and they
certainly didn't have a small, crying child tucked away somewhere out of sight.
"Hello?" he said, softly. "Leech?"
The crying abruptly stopped, and then, tentatively, a tiny voice said, "Sarah."
"Sarah," Warren repeated, trying to sound encouraging. "Are you a Morlock?"
"Uh-huh. Leech is my friend. He went to get help when the bad people came."
Warren sat up straighter, trying to see where the girl was. "Yeah, he found me and I came to help."
There were a few sniffles and then Sarah said, with awe in her little voice, "Are you the angel?"
Warren opened his mouth to reply, but a new voice cut in. This one was male, oddly sibilant, and much less friendly. "There's no such things as angels, stripling."
A cage rattled sharply, and Sarah made a choked, panicked noise. Warren clenched his fists. He hated to see people hurt, but he really hated to see children victimized. Someone was asking for it.
"No, our winged friend here is simply a product of a rather elegant genetic quirk," the new voice said, accompanied by footsteps. Warren waited for the man to come into view, not sure what he was going to do next but certainly intending to do something. Leap forward and bash the guy's arrogant nose in, maybe.
Then the man did come into view, and all Warren could do was stare.
Earlier, in the sewers, the Angel had descended into Hell, and Hell had not been happy to see him. Now it looked like he'd ended up in the Devil's laboratory, and the Devil was delighted with his company.
The man's face was the color of death - a bloodless chalk-white that made Warren, irrelevantly, think of an old song his parents liked: "A Whiter Shade of Pale." The colorlessness made a nasty contrast to the solid red eyes, the thin black lips, and the gleaming black armor; Warren gathered that that was the point. A small, red, diamond-shaped mark was in the middle of his forehead, matching the larger one in the center of his ebony chest, and he had a vainglorious excuse for a cape made up of strips of armor, topside black and underside red. He looked about as close to the embodiment of evil as Warren had ever seen.
"Good morning, Mr. Worthington," the man said, smiling and revealing a mouth full of white, pointed teeth. "You are Warren Kenneth Worthington III, correct? Only child of Warren Jr. and Kathryn, and young heir to an industrialist fortune?"
Warren nodded, perfectly polite, and said, "Nice to meet you, too, Satan."
The man's smile widened. "But of course - how rude of me. My name is Sinister... Mr. Sinister."
Warren started laughing. He couldn't help it; the utter ridiculousness of the past twenty-four hours caught up with him in a rush, and he was either going to laugh or cry like a baby, so he laughed. And he laughed hard and long, until he was choking for breath and tears started running from his eyes. He couldn't wipe them away, of course, not with his hands shackled behind his back, and that just made him laugh harder.
When the laughter finally started to die down, Sinister leaned toward him and asked, overly soliticious, "Are we feeling better now, Mr. Worthington?"
"I spent the night up to my neck in sewage," he said, the last gasps of laughter giving his words a humor he didn't feel, "fighting guys with big harpoons and razor discs and watching innocent people die, and I wake up here with my wings chained and find out I'm being held by a guy with a name..." - he started laughing again - "...with a name that the Village People wouldn't touch, and you want to know if I'm okay? Oh, I'm great, thanks."
Sinister tilted his head, a slight, hard-edged smile on his face. "I am, of course, glad to hear that you are comfortable in your present state."
Warren shifted in his chains, catching his breath. "I take it I'm going to be here for a while."
"Oh, indeed," Sinister said. "I trust that the news does not disturb you overmuch."
He shook his head. "You might want to tell me where Carol is, though, before I wring your albino neck."
"Charming," Sinister said, narrowing his eyes. "And in front of a child, too. But very well: your dear Ms. Danvers is being held elsewhere, as she rather unwisely chose to attempt an escape. Modern sedatives are such remarkable things, don't you think? And imagine my elation at the discovery that adamantium needles will pierce that pretty skin."
Furious, Warren lunged forward, but Sinister just stepped back and chuckled. "Patience, bird. You'll fly again soon."
With that, he turned on his heel and calmly walked out of the room. There was a faint hiss of air that Warren placed immediately as a pressurized door sealing shut. Great. The Devil's lab was up to safety regs.
In her unseen cage, Sarah started crying again.
"Shhh, shhh," Warren said immediately, trying to calm her and himself. He was putting together a plan, and at the moment it mainly involved breaking out and taking Sarah with him. He remembered the two X-Men telling him about their special school; he'd take Sarah to safety there, and get Carol out too, if he could find her. Carol was a big girl - as she'd so aptly pointed out, she could take care of herself, and better than he could at that. He thought of what she'd told him during the fight, of what she used to do for a living, and shook his head. No, if it came right down to it, Carol would want him to get the kid out first - but he would do everything he could to get her out too. "I need you to do something for me, okay, sweetie?"
The sobs gulped to a stop. "O-okay."
"Can you see the door?"
"Uh-huh. I'll tell you when bad people are coming."
She catches on fast, Warren thought, pleased. A smart accomplice would make this much easier. "Perfect."
When he'd lunged at Sinister, he'd felt the chain on his right wing give slightly. It wasn't much, but he figured that it was the best option he had, and now he leaned forward, pulling on the restraint with every bit of strength he possessed.
After a few minutes, he felt the chain wrench just a bit looser, and threw himself against the restraint with renewed energy.
"Mister?"
He stopped, breathing hard. "Yeah?"
"Are you really an angel?"
Geez. That was like being asked if Santa Claus was real; should he tell her the truth, or preserve the lie? Test my morality a little more, okay? he silently asked whoever was listening, and went with the noncommittal response, "I have wings, don't I?"
"Oh. Is your name Warren like the pale man said?"
"It is," he said, all the while thinking both, which isn't any angel's name that I've ever heard of, but maybe her religious schooling is lacking more than mine and, "pale man" is a pretty tame description.
Sarah was quiet. He waited for a moment, and then went back to trying to escape. The chain was rattling now, notably loose, and he gathered his strength for one final lunge.
The chain wrenched free with a loud chunk and Warren fell forward, catching himself at the last second. He sat up and regarded the broken link on the end of the chain, which on closer inspection had clearly been weak to begin with. "I could make a really bad joke about this," he muttered, then moved on to more important things.
He still had one chain to deal with as well as the restraints on his hands, but now that his right wing wasn't tied to the wall, he could push himself to his feet and reach one of the wicked- looking surgical instruments lying on the steel shelves. "Is the hallway still clear?" he asked Sarah.
"I can't see nobody, but I hear some footsteps," Sarah whispered. "Far away, but coming closer."
"Have to make this fast, then." He chose a saw with a circular blade, grabbed it and flicked it on behind his back, holding it to the restraint between his wrists. There was a mechanical buzz followed by a electrical short, and the pressure around his wrists abruptly disappeared. He dropped the saw accidentally, and picked it up by the handle, rubbing his wrists absently.
The blade oscillated instead of spun, but he figured it didn't make any difference so long as it cut. He turned his face away and pressed the blade to the chain tying down his left wing. Sparks flew and the blade nearly skittered off the metal and into his feathers; he twitched the wing away just in time.
After an endless second, the saw cut through the metal and the chain dropped away. Warren spent another few precious seconds tugging and shoving the clamps off of his wings. Some feathers went with them, leaving red stains. He winced, but didn't have any intention of sticking around to get his wounds bandaged.
"Sarah?"
"The footsteps went the other way," she said.
Warren stood and flexed his wings, waiting for the stiffness to go out of his knees. From his new vantage point, he still couldn't see Sarah. He took a deep breath and left the corner for the first time in God only knew how many hours.
The cages and equipment made a narrow aisle, and he walked slowly down it, looking for Sarah as
well as anyone else who might have been taken by Sinister.
But there was no one, not until he came to the front of the room. There, next to the door, was a cage whose top was roughly even with his waist, and inside the cage was a small girl with thin pink hair, dirty clothes, a tiny rag doll clutched to her chest, and dozens of bones jutting out of her skin. Her skin was also pink, and her eyes were a shade of blue-green so pale they almost looked white.
She stared up at him with hope shining in those eyes, the bones making her look like something from a horror movie, and Warren felt his heart constrict. Just like Leech, this was more than a little child - this was a kindred spirit, a mutant whose genetic quirks were on display for the whole world to see. A Morlock, most certainly.
"Hey, Sarah," he said, kneeling down in front of her cage. There was a lock on the door, and he was glad he'd kept the saw with him. "Are you ready to get out of here?"
She nodded. He held up the saw and said, "Okay. Get as far away from the door as possible,
and close your eyes."
Five seconds later, the lock was in a sparking ruin at his feet, Sarah was clinging to his hand, and he was peering out into the hallway.
"Okay, sweetie, we're going to have to run, and we're going to have to be fast and quiet. Can you do that?"
Sarah whispered, "I know how. Callisto teaches us."
Callisto. The name seemed vaguely familiar; he thought he remembered hearing the Morlocks shout it last night. Their leader, maybe? He smiled at Sarah, although he certainly didn't feel like it. "Perfect. Now let's go."
She tightened her hold on his hand, and he noted painfully that she had bone spurs protruding from her knuckles.
The hallway, which curved and twisted and branched and gave Warren the uncomfortable feeling that he was a mouse running a maze, had the same industrial-morgue look, and was inset with doors at random intervals. Most of the doors were shut and locked, and those that were open led to empty rooms. As they ran along the corridors, taking turns at random, he started to worry that they were never going to get out of the place, and he had the sinking feeling that finding Carol was going to be just as impossible.
Suddenly Sarah stopped jogging and let go of his hand. "Angel Warren! I hear something!"
He stopped too. "What is it?"
"I- I don't know. Not feet... I think it's a subway train!"
"A subway train?"
She nodded, a look of intense concentration on her face. "It sounds like a train."
He forced himself to be still and listen. Very faintly, he heard the rumble of subway cars from somewhere. "It does. Can you tell what direction it's coming from?"
Sarah looked at him like he was crazy. "Closer to Upworld. Higher than us. No one lives over subways - it's too dangerous. Police find you and make you leave."
"Right," Warren said. He looked at the closed doors nearest them; maybe one of them was an exit to this unseen subway line. And if it is, it's probably locked, he told himself, but what other
choices did he have, really?
To his complete surprise, the first door he tried opened with a soft hiss to reveal a stairwell leading upwards. The sound of the passing subway train was louder, and an almost imperceptible breeze drifted down. He turned back to Sarah and extended his hand, smiling. "Let's g-"
An alarm sounded, loud and shrill, and the hallway was suddenly filled with flashing red lights. Even he could hear the pounding footsteps running towards them, along with a few shouts. One of those Marauder idiots rounded the corner - the big guy with the harpoons. He looked ready for more killing.
"Oh, fantastic," Warren muttered, all thoughts of finding Carol ruefully and suddenly abandoned. He scooped Sarah up in his arms, bones be damned, and started sprinting up the stairs.
He burst through the door at the top and found himself in a subway tunnel, relatively well-lit and, judging from the noise, just around a bend from a subway platform crowded with normal people going about their normal business. He made a move in that direction, only to be stopped by a shout from the child in his arms.
"Wait! I can fix the door!" She jumped down and kicked the door shut; the side facing the subway line was camoflauged as just another graffitti-sprayed stretch of concrete. It stood to reason, Warrn realized: someone with a labyrinthine underground laboratory was not going to give it away with a shiny steel door. While he was musing, Sarah grabbed one of the bones jutting out of her arm, concentrated, and pulled. The bone came free with a squelching, sickening pop, and she jammed it into the space between the door and the ground.
The world's most disgusting doorstop, but it might work, Warren thought as she ran back to him. He picked her up without thinking about it and they started running again, towards the platform.
Something slammed heavily against the door, rattling the bone.
Warren did not look back. He really didn't want to see what was coming; he knew very well that the big harpoon guy was going to break down the door and charge after them.
"Help us," he called out as they neared the platform. A few people backed away and ran up the stairs. "Please, help! There's someone trying to kill us!"
He had a sudden memory: They killing them! Bad people killing Morlocks - Callisto said run away, get help -
Warren wondered now, for the first time, just how many people Leech had tried to talk to that night.
He stretched his wings and flew onto the platform, Sarah burying her face in his shoulder. Her pulse was racing - an odd double beat - and he couldn't blame her. Still, he wished she hadn't, because her skull had sharp bone knobs sticking out of it.
As soon as his feet touched the platform, roughly half of the people ran.
"We're not going to hurt you," Warren said, holding up his free hand beseechingly. "We just need help, please!"
"Please!" Sarah exclaimed, lifting her head from his shoulder. She sounded almost... angry. "Angel Warren says please! The pale man is gonna kill us!"
The door was out of sight now, but he heard it burst open. More people ran away.
"Call the police!" he shouted, practically begging now. "Call SOMEBODY! PLEASE!"
The last two people on the platform turned and fled.
Warren looked over his shoulder at the unseen door, feeling true fear for the first time since they'd escaped. This was New York, after all - why was he so surprised? Sure, the city bonded under terrorist attacks, but it also let Kitty Genovese die in a well-lit residential street in front of thirty-eight people. And she hadn't even been a mutant.
"Angel Warren," Sarah said, tugging on his neck. "Beautiful Dreamer said to run to the Cathedral. Be safe there."
He looked at the stairwell, longingly, but he knew he couldn't escape that way. There were too many innocent people "upworld," and he didn't want to get them caught in the middle of a pitched battle between him and a Marauder. "Right. Tell me the way."
They ran down the track, splashing through puddles of cold, muddy water and garbage, and every step felt to Warren like he was running to his doom.
Callisto was furious.
Her tribe, her Morlocks, were but a shadow of what they'd once been. Add to that the further indignity of their homes being destroyed and she itched to kill something, anything.
But the Marauders had not breached the Alley. And for that blessing, Callisto was almost willing to overlook the rest of it.
Almost.
The Alley stretched from one end of Manhattan to the other, a full mile beneath the surface of the island. The multi-story tunnel had been built, in secret, in the 1950s by the United States government as a refuge from Cold War nukes, but it had never been used for its intended purpose. It had never been used, period, until several years ago, when Callisto had stumbled upon it after her flight from the Upworld. The Morlocks had been born there, the name of her fledging tribe chosen from her favorite H. G. Wells novel, and they had lived there for quite some time before the tribe had pressured her to move closer to Upworld.
The relocation had been a disaster. And that was the understatement of the century.
The Marauders had torn through them like tissue paper, smashing through their scattered lookouts before any of them had been able to raise an alarm. And then, when the telepaths had finally cried warning, it was already too late, and the killers had begun the assault on the cluster of cardboard underdwellings that her tribe called their new home.
The Morlocks been born in the Alley and there they should have stayed. She thought it was only right that they find refuge there now.
In the Alley, with its easily-sealed exits and vast warren of defensive points, the broken remnants of her tribe could recuperate, rebuild themselves, grow strong once again. Callisto was already organizing an expedition to Upworld to get more recruits. Until then, she was triaging her tribe: not-seriously injured took care of the seriously injured, least hurt stood watch in case the
Marauders came back. She herself was doing both, alternating shifts constantly, relying on her mutant powers to carry her through the grueling schedule.
Right now Callisto was attending the wounded, specifically an old woman who could hypnotize anyone with a glance and few pretty words. That hadn't helped Annalee prevent Sabretooth from ripping open her side, or stopped the blood from pouring out as she lay, helpless, in the sewer passage for the better part of the night. Healer, overworked and nearly falling down from
exhaustion, had informed Callisto earlier that the old mutant was going to die, and probably within the hour.
Until then, Callisto was going to stay with her.
Annalee's breathing was labored, especially to someone with hyperkeen senses. Callisto sat by her and held the woman's limp, clammy hand. She didn't talk, and the area around them was relatively silent out of respect.
That all changed when the Callasantos sisters came running from a tunnel exit, bounding over the prone and bandaged forms of the injured tribespeople to reach their leader. Callisto viewed their approach with a narrowed eye. The sisters had been sent out as guards on the farthest perimeter, and their return meant something big.
She hoped it also meant a chance for revenge.
Thornn and Feral slid to a halt in front of Callisto and Annalee, fangs gleaming and thoroughly out of breath.
"Marauders in the tunnels," Thornn hissed. Her tail twitched madly.
"Heading for the Cathedral," Feral added. Her own tail was still, but her ears were flattened, and the yellow fur that covered her body was standing on end.
"How far?" Callisto asked immediately, dropping Annalee's hand and standing. She gave the old woman a last glance - priority shift, no offense, you understand - and started for her nearby cache of weapons at a fast jog.
The sisters, effortlessly keeping pace, exchanged glances. "Not far. A few minutes, maybe," Feral said.
"They were chasing the Upworlder angel," Thornn informed her as Callisto began methodically strapping on her weapons. She checked her staff's spring-loaded blades before slinging it over her back. "And he - the angel - has one the children."
That stopped Callisto cold. She looked at Thornn and Feral, questioning sharply, "One of ours?"
Feral nodded. "Sarah. I saw the bones."
Callisto held still for another moment, thinking and reevaluating, and then signaled Thornn. "Get Sunder and put him in charge here. And sit with Annalee." To Feral, she said, "You - come with me."
The sisters did as ordered, and less than a minute later Callisto and Feral were navigating the tunnels that lead, somewhat circuitously, to the grand underground structure Morlocks called the Cathedral.
If the Alley's origins were shrouded in secrecy, then the Cathedral's defied explanation. It was a true church, complete with soaring, vaulted ceilings, completely buried beneath the streets of New York City. Callisto herself had no idea how it had come to be there, and until she recruited a psi who could see the past, she doubted she ever would. The mystery, however, only added to the reverence the Morlocks held for it. It was in the Cathedral and no where else that they held the sacred Ceremony of Light.
Some of the tunnels that they raced through were close enough to the surface to be populated by the ordinary underground homeless, but Callisto sensed no one. The humans had learned to stay well clear of Morlock passages - except for one man, Kieros, who had inexplicably hovered around the tribe's fringes until Callisto had finally given up and invited him in. Not as a true Morlock, of course; Kieros was a pet, an oddity, a scarecrow to be mocked. But he had stayed, and after the slaughter, Callisto had tried to find him along with everyone else. Caliban could not track humans, though, and Kieros remained among the missing.
Callisto and Feral emerged into the Cathedral's uppermost tier well ahead of the echoing noises of the Upworlders' fight. Feral growled beneath her breath. Her leader decided that this was a good time to fill her in on the plan, before the young, impulsive mutant did something to ruin it.
"Listen," Callisto whispered. "Nevermind the Marauders. Just get Sarah."
Feral frowned and opened her mouth.
"The Marauders haven't breached the Alley," Callisto said sharply, cutting off her protest before she could start. "They don't know we're still here. For the good of the tribe, we have to keep it that way."
She watched as Feral took that in, visibly struggling to reconcile her primal - and understandable - urge to revenge with the logic of her leader's words. Silently, the realistic side of Callisto added, And there's only two of us to God knows how many of them, we've been awake for over forty-eight hours straight, and neither of us could win a fight now - and damn how much we want to.
"Okay," Feral finally said, bobbing her furry head in reluctant agreement.
No sooner had the word escaped her lips than the Upworlders' fight came roaring into the Cathedral's lowest level. There was very little light in the structure - just a few ancient service lightbulbs the Morlocks had dragged in to keep them from falling on their asses whenever they were there - and Callisto and Feral had clung to the deep recesses of shadow out of habit. Now,
the Upworlders waged war on each other without the slightest idea of the Morlocks' presence.
Callisto watched with a hunter's eye. Two Marauders, the hulking man called Harpoon and the fashion-pretty Vertigo (they could have taken them, but better to be safe), and the Upworlder angel, who was indeed carrying young Sarah. He was shielding the child from the others' attacks, something that made Callisto's opinion of him go up a few notches. Very few.
The angel tried to take flight into the vaulted room, but Vertigo sent him crashing into a wall almost immediately. He fell to the ground but quickly scrambled to his feet, still holding Sarah tightly against his chest with one arm.
"Oh, please, don't leave yet," the woman called, taunting. The Marauders were keeping their distance for some reason; perhaps more taunting, like a cat toying with its supper mouse. "This is just getting fun!"
Callisto nodded silently at her companion, pressing one finger to her lips although Feral knew better than to make noise, and they climbed and jumped in shadows down to the lowest level. There they took up a position in front of a tunnel entrance and waited for a chance to retrieve Sarah.
Callisto was not an idiot. She knew full well that they were probably going to have to run out and grab the child themselves, but she was hoping that they wouldn't. Best case scenario: the Upworlders took their fight elsewhere and left all three Morlocks to themselves.
Worst case: the Marauders captured them and the Alley was taken. She reached for her staff, curling her fingers around the metal. That was not going to happen, not while she had breath in her body.
Still standing on the ground, the angel said, "Lady, your idea of fun leaves a lot to be desired," as he looked from Vertigo to Harpoon.
That was a good idea, because Harpoon had withdrawn a spear. Energy crackled around the long, narrow metal projectile, and he threw it directly at the angel's chest with no warning.
The angel dropped Sarah and dove in the opposite direction, tucking into a smooth roll and launching upwards as he came out of it. He climbed a few yards, then swooped down and clipped Vertigo in the ribs. Callisto didn't consider the pretty face to be much of a fighter, and her opinion was confirmed when Vertigo promptly fell back, moaning and clutching her side.
The angel soared up again as Harpoon drew more spears. He was a flawless marksman - there were a half-dozen dead Morlocks to prove it - and now he flung the spears with lethal precision. But the angel darted and spun and looped, dodging everything thrown at him, until even Callisto, jaded as she was, found herself holding her breath and almost awed at the grace radiating from the winged mutant.
His luck did not hold.
The angel dropped down until he was practically on top of Callisto and Feral. Harpoon threw two of the projectiles at once. One harpoon sliced harmlessly through the air as the angel dipped and twisted to avoid it. The other caught the angel in the bone of his wing and pinned him to the wall at ground level like a butterfly.
The angel cried out in agony. Sarah, still on the ground where he'd dropped her, shrieked and ran towards him.
"GET AWAY! RUN!" the angel shouted at her, and pushed her into the shadows behind him with a vicious shove. Sarah, not ready for the action, stumbled and tripped; Callisto put out an arm and caught her neatly at the last moment. She held her finger to her lips, this time out of necessity. Sarah was too wound up to think properly and might give away their position.
"Callisto," Sarah whispered, tears in her eyes. "Angel Warren needs help!"
"No. Time to get us safe away," the leader murmured, picking up the girl and holding her with a firm grasp.
"But Angel Warren-"
"NO," Callisto growled, bringing the full force of her power and authority as leader bearing down onto the girl, and Sarah swallowed the rest of her protest.
Feral was also growling, but it was the snarl of a lioness scenting an easy kill, and she was inching toward the fight. Callisto reached out with her free hand and slapped the teenager across her face. "Do as told. Leave."
Feral hissed, showing her fangs, and then bounded off down the tunnel. Callisto turned to follow her, but paused to see what had become of the angel.
Even with one wing pinned, he was still fighting. As she watched, he managed to kick Harpoon squarely in the jaw and sent the big man backwards a few steps. Then he reached up and grabbed the spear in his wing, trying to tug it free. The effort tore another anguished cry from his throat, and Callisto, no stranger to injured body parts herself, winced in perfect understanding. The hardest part about getting stabbed was pulling the damn things out.
Harpoon was not done, though, and he stepped forward now and rammed a spear through the other wing and into the wall, impaling it as well. The angel's entire body arched as though he'd been electrocuted, and then he went limp.
Across the floor, Vertigo was getting up, and Callisto decided it was well past time to leave. She backed up slowly, hoping that the movement would attract less attention than if she simply turned and ran. It also gave her a fine view of Harpoon ripping out the spears and the angel's body collapsing, gracelessly, to the ground amid a small shower of gore and bloody feathers.
It was a pity, she thought. The Upworlder angel was handsome, and he did fight bravely. In another time and place, she might have tried to get him as her consort. She was no great beauty now - not with her face lined with scars, one useless eye hidden behind a black eyepatch, and the thick, unstyled, and greasy shock of black hair on her head - but she had grace, and power, and she could have landed him easily. After this night... only death would claim him.
Callisto did not try to shield Sarah's eyes. Let the child see what happened to weak Upworlders, to those mutants who were not strong and went places where they didn't belong.
Sarah looked, and she saw, but the lesson she carried away in her two little hearts was not the one that Callisto had intended - although the leader would not have minded had she known it. As they scurried back to the Alley, Sarah swore upon everything she held sacred that someday, when she was big enough and strong enough, she would return here and get revenge on all those evil human Upworlders who had let the angel -her angel, her beautiful savior - be dragged down and broken. She clenched her fingers around the tiny white feather she'd taken from his wing, the promise filling her with a sense of righteous purpose.
She would get revenge. She would avenge her angel. She would make the Upworlders pay.
Or die trying.
Sinister was waiting when Harpoon and Vertigo returned, carrying the unconscious body of Warren Worthington between them. They dropped the body at his feet, along with two bloody slayspears. His red eyes narrowed as he took in the damage; so angry was he at the sight that he decided to ignore for the moment the lack of the fascinating, but ultimately useless, osteomorph girl. "What happened?"
"He was about to escape," Harpoon said with no emotion in his face or voice. "There was no other way."
Sinister wanted nothing more than to break the idiot's fingers one by one. He reigned in his anger, though, and hissed, "I specifically ordered that you bring him back unharmed."
"There was no other way," Harpoon repeated, still irritatingly stone-faced.
Sinister drew back his lips in a silent snarl, then gestured at Worthington's body. The white feathers around the wounds had become a slow, seeping dark red that, rather ironically, matched the red of his costume. "Take him into the main operating room. And try not to maim him further on the way there, hmm?"
Harpoon and Vertigo did as told. Sinister stayed behind for a moment longer, hands clasped behind his back. This was an unscheduled complication, although not an entirely disastrous one. He did have, after all, some expertise in the realm of cybernetics, and the challenge of building anew an angel of death was... intriguing.
He kicked one of the bloodstained slayspears. Perhaps the imbecile had done him a favor.
Chuckling at the thought, Mr. Sinister turned his mind to the surgery awaiting him in the operating room. Amputations, as a rule, were never without difficulty...