Chapter 9

How Many Kinds of Pain Are There?

"Sugah…"

"Yeah?"

"D'ya think they're OK?"

"No"

"What're we gonna do, then?"

"Wait"

"Oh"

Oh indeed. Logan had a horrible feeling that this was all about to get seriously out of hand; he kept getting flashes of the 'madness' smell from Smoke, and that couldn't be good. Marie wanted to help, which was a nice idea but she hadn't seen what a tremendous fight Smoke had put up in the woods. He suspected that she thought that in an emergency she might get a punch or two, or a scratch; he knew better. So did his animal side; his forearms and knuckles were beginning to itch unbearably, a sure sign that the claws were starting to shift nervously within his body. They were ready.

If Smoke broke loose and lunged for his Marie, then she was dead. Simple.

He hoped like hell the professor knew what he was doing.

*

Escaped?

*Yeah. Watch*

Unlike the last time, they did not have bodies to watch from; they were not standing in the scene, but observing from the outside. Xavier was beginning to feel uneasy; just beyond the range of his sight he kept catching glimpses of a greasy, green black roiling that could be only one thing.

Madness.

*You see, I knew what they wanted to do with me as soon as we got there - I can feel people's emotions, remember?*

Smoke's parents, being assured that their daughter would be fine, in a light, airy room filled with afternoon sunshine and the scent of jasmine. The smiling scientist seeing them to their car. Losing the smile as he returned to the building, heading down another, darker, corridor. Talking to a woman in a white coat outside Smoke's cell, scribbling on a clipboard.

"I want her prepped for a scan. Sedate her first; I can do without an animal biting my staff."

"I didn't know you cared."

"I don't. But staff are expensive to replace."

"Charming. Do you think this one will be useful?"

"Absolutely. We need a baseline CT and MRI, then I thought we'd work on the healing aspects first, then the empathy. She projects - if she cracks, she could make a useful weapon."

"How so?"

The man shook his head in disbelief.

"Don't you get it? She could make our governments' enemies want what we want…just by sitting in the next room. Try and see the bigger picture, will you? Good grief, next you'll be saying we're violating her rights!"

"Aren't we?"

"Nonsense. The ends justify the means. She's just another lab rat, albeit a valuable one."

"OK. After lunch, then?"

"Two hours."

"Right."

The two scientists strolled off through the corridors, discussing the finer aspects of the torture planned for the frightened teenager.

*You see, I could feel the others there. I knew how they felt - that was far worse than what I knew was going to happen to me. Look…*

Xavier's mind was suddenly awash with mental images. Screams of pain. Pleas for mercy. Broken sobbing. The pathetic mental babbling of the lost. No, no, no more. I'll be good. I will. Don't hurt me. Please stop. Please stop. Not again. No more. My children - where are my children? Stop hurting me. No no no no no nononononononono………….

In the cell, the teenager is rolled up into a ball, clutching her head and sobbing at the grief and pain she has no way to block. Sounds in the corridor. They're coming for me, this time. They're going to take me -

Tie me down -

And cut -

Me -

Up

The door opens. Foolishly, the tired looking scientist entering hasn't realised how desperate the captive is. She only realises that she could have done with, say, an armed squad of guards for backup and maybe some air support, perhaps heavy shock troops, as she is hit square in the chest by a mass of sharp teeth driven by blind terror. Maybe, she considers dreamily as she swiftly bleeds her life out onto the cold floor, we should work with smaller lab rats. These bigger ones can be so tiresome. I'm cold. I wonder why?

Smoke leaves the corpse behind her and runs for her life.

Crashing through doors. Shrugging off the sharp sting of bullets. Tearing into anyone who steps into her line of flight. She's caught them by surprise; who would expect a slight teenager, overwhelmed by experience and terrified beyond belief, to be rescued by the animal inside?

For coherent thought has fled. Much older instincts have taken over, and they have no pity, no mercy, no consideration at all - just an indomitable will to survive, at any cost.

Smoke! Smoke! It's not real! It's just a memory

*Real enough. And you did want to see.*

Don't lose yourself. Remember where you are

Afterwards, Xavier reflected ruefully that using the word 'remember' might have been a mistake. Instead of pulling her out of the memory as he had intended and - to be fair - had almost achieved, by using that word he lost her completely. So tangled was he in her memory, however, that she dragged him along with her - giving him a ride he hoped he would never, never have to experience again.

Alarms, now, and flashing red lights, assaulting heightened senses with blaring klaxons of sound that could make your ears bleed. Smashing glass doors, staggering over fallen enemies - how did they get there? - and why is there so much blood - tearing through rooms where experiments were being carried out on crying, screaming mutants who couldn't escape their tormentors. Even worse were the dissecting rooms, and the procedures forced on those who could no longer protest - they're people, damn you! - running and fighting, screeching and hurting. Electric shocks, bullets and blood and glass. Pain and exhaustion and fear. Anger. A familiar scent.

Family!

One last charge, one last door. Not locked. Out into the pleasant lobby she faintly remembered from earlier, through a plate glass window and long, painful drop to the ground. Away.

Over a fence. Smell of burning flesh as paws singe under powerful current. Heart juddering under assault of voltage, stopping and starting as the healing tries desperately to keep up. Over the top, over the wire, feel it tear and rip at hide. Trying to keep her within. Lie still for a moment and bleed. Bullets! Run on.

Follow that scent through the trees - don't show yourself to the road! - keep running and ignore the burning in your lungs, the fire in your muscles, the blood you keep panting over your jaw in a mass of foam. Keep running.

Run on. Closer now.

A bend in a road. A torn and mangled car. Bodies just visible within the wreckage - undoubtedly dead. Heads and limbs don't bend like that. Collapse and listen to the combat clad man talking to his radio.

"Targets neutralised. Do you want them returned for investigation?" A pause.

"OK. We'll be careful. Ready for cleanup here."

They're talking about my family. They're dead. They killed them.

"OK, listen up!" calls the man to his colleagues. "Another target for us. This one's an escapee, and could be heading right for us. Think you can handle it?"

Whoops and catcalls.

"Hey, can I keep it's head?"

"Yeah, it'd look real good on the mess wall."

"A mutie head? You're kidding!"

"Food's bad enough, that would really put us off!"

No more of this. They will defile my family no more. My pack, my life. I can heal. They will pay. I can live in the woods.

Moving with a stealth born of years spent up on the moors, stalking the stag to touch him and send him away with a snort and a toss of his head and the hare to her form, taking rabbits by hand and following the badger so quietly he never knew you were there, she descended to the clearing, and took her revenge on the despoilers of her family.

*

"Oh shit….."

"What is it?"

"Marie, get outta here - "

She never got the chance. A gurgling noise began to bubble up from the depths of Smoke's chest, becoming louder and more powerful as it neared escape; finding it's way to the air, it became a powerful scream. No sooner had the screaming begun than the change followed it, as swift as thought. Xavier's hands slipped down, no longer able to grasp fingers that had suddenly thickened and twisted into paws. He slumped forward in his chair as a fully changed Smoke launched herself vertically from her position opposite him.

Twisting in the air, she landed as lightly as a cat in front of Marie, who had, as Logan had suspected she would, completely ignored his order to escape and moved toward the conflagration. Bunching muscles, baring teeth and emitting a sound somewhere between a snarl and a scream, she leaped for the first person she could see.

Logans heart stopped.

Feeling as though he was moving through treacle, he lunged forward to put himself between the raging beast and his beloved, claws ready to tear into the creature that dared attack his mate. With a sound that Marie later swore she would remember for the rest of her life - probably at around three in the morning after a bad night - the Wolverine's claws were suddenly buried to the hilt in the chest and throat of the attacker. Continuing his forward move, he bore her backwards and slammed her body into the table, pinning her on her back.

Rogue raced over to the professor's side, helping him sit up a little straighter. He appeared disorientated, lost; as though he had barely escaped from the experience with his own sanity intact.

A moment of silence, broken only by the slow trickle of Smoke's blood over the table and onto the carpet, and the retraction of his claws. Logan held her on her back with one hand on her chest, feeling for a heartbeat. After all, her healing factor should compensate - shouldn't it?

"Is she - " The professor's voice cracked with emotion.

"Yeah. Fat lot of good we were to her."

"It wasn't your fault, Logan."

"We told her you could help" Marie's voice was choked.

The professor looked grim.

"I did my best. Are you sure we can't help her? Is she really….gone?"

"Yeah."

*No*

With that, powerful hind legs swept up and kicked Logan away, impacting hard enough on his groin to curl him up into a little private universe of pain on the floor. Freed, Smoke twisted around so that she was facing Marie; focusing briefly on her, then on Xavier, she shook her great shaggy head and flung herself through the window, landing with a thump in the snow outside and moving as fast as she could toward the distant treeline.

"Scott!" Called the professor, clutching Marie's arm in a vice like grip. The leader of the X Men burst through the door, taking in the grey face of his mentor and a fallen Wolverine in one quick glance.

"Scramble the X Men. We cannot allow her to leave these grounds - she's very dangerous. Stop her."

"And if she won't stop?"

"Just stop her."

Scott swallowed hard. He knew what he had just been asked to do. Nodding briefly, he raced back out the door to rouse the team.

"You can't - " Logan wheezed, finally pulling himself up from the floor with Rogue's assistance "- that makes you as bad as them."

Xavier closed his eyes, pain written on his face.

"I must. We cannot risk - "

"You'd kill her?" Marie's eyes went very wide at the thought. Xavier didn't answer.

"Logan!" she wailed, "We can't let this happen!"

"We won't, darlin'." He whooshed in a deep breath, and pulled himself upright. Taking Rogue's hand, he lifted it to his lips and kissed her knuckles gently.

"We're all the family she's got left. We'll find her." He turned to Xavier.

"We don't just abandon our friends….do we?"

With that, they set out to try and salvage some scrap of good from the rapidly expanding disaster - leaving Xavier to look at the ruined window, and wonder where it had all begun to go so wrong.