Ten
"Well," Loki started. "This is swell, just peachy. Why did you get all emotional Ghost? It's not like you to get all emotional."
Ghost sighed. "Could I have helped it? She died not knowing what it was exactly she was doing for us, her friends will never listen to us, they'll have no knowledge of what we were trying to do. We'll probably die here, I know I will, and then all of this will be for nothing."
"You can't say that!" Loki shouted. "We are going to get out of here, we are going to get that poison out of your system and we are going to come back here and explain all of it to these people."
She shook her head. "If it were only true brother," she shivered. "But what are the possibilities of getting out of here? They have psychically locked this place down; I can't even become an apparition and on top of all of that I can feel the poison in my blood. It is like fire, slowly eating its way toward my heart."
"It hasn't reached your heart yet?"
"No," she winced. "It resides in the blood, but it does not move with it. It slowly makes it way through out the body, attacking every organ except the brain and the heart. After it has attacked all organs except those and tortures them with unbelievable pain, it flows into the brain then the heart. Death is slow, and as painful as nothing ever experienced by anyone." She winced again. "No antidote and after being exposed for three hours, bleeding it out is out of the question, because it will already be in different organs at the same time and if you try to bleed it out you'll die of blood loss." She chuckled. "The bastard who designed this poison was really sick and sadistic."
"How long has it been since it has been in you?"
"It kills you after twenty hours, in sixteen hours," she winced and convulsed. "I'll be dead."
Loki gulped. "No, has it been that long already?"
"I'm sorry little brother, I couldn't help getting emotional about it. Koda," she cried. "Koda never knew it."
"Knew what?"
"That I was her uncle." A voice said. Professor Xavier wheeled into the room.
Loki looked over from his place on the bed at the Professor. He glared at him and spat in his direction. "Push off!"
He wheel right up to the bed where Loki and Ghost were bund together by rope and psychic chains.
"Why did you kill me only niece?" he demanded of Ghost.
Ghost merely buried her head in a pillow and cried harder.
"Why!" Professor yelled and used his powers to lift her head.
Ghost stopped crying suddenly and spat at the Professor. "Because I had to!"
Professor threw her back onto the bed. "No you didn't."
"Would you listen if I said I could explain?" she asked he turned his back. "No, I thought not, so why try!"
"You kill my little niece before I could tell her of our bond!"
"Then that is your own bloody fault Charles!" she screamed back at him. "You should have told her when you had the chance!"
He wheeled to the door then turned back to them. "You'll never leave here." He said and left.
Loki looked at Ghost. "So,"
"So." She sighed. "I had to kill her, otherwise she would have suffered as I am-" Ghost gasped as there appeared a cloud of blue smoke. Kurt emerged from it looking around then room then down at Loki and Ghost.
"Hello." He said without smiling.
"Why are you here?" Ghost asked. "Come to torture us?"
"No." Kurt replied. "I came to ask you why you killed her. No threats, no torture, I just want to know why."
Ghost looked up at him. "Because if I didn't, the poison would have killed her slower and more painfully, as it is killing me."
"What?" Kurt rested a hand on her shoulder.
"The poison attacks the body organs then attacks the brain and the heart and kills in a torturing pain so slow and agonizing that. that." she sighed. "That the pain can't even be described by words, had I let her live the suffering would have been unbearable and she would have suffered as I am to suffer."
"So," he concluded. "You killed her, put her blood into yours to save the poison- why?"
"Because I work for the Scientific Institute of Gaea in far north Russia. I joined the Mutant Regime of Russia so I could get here to America then I bailed on the mission and I made a living out here with word that the poison would surface somewhere in upstate New York. So I waited and told my brother I would make a living out here for us, which I did. Then it happened, I got word that the poison was close to surfacing, so I set out to find my brother and get him out of the mess before anything started, but he was already in it. Then when I saw Crystal, I knew this was the real deal. I knew someone would have to make a sacrifice to get a sample of the poison. I'll admit, I wasn't expecting it to be Koda; she had a family she knew nothing about.
"But it was her, and Crystal positioned it so we couldn't save her. So I put the poison in my body and I killed her, saving her from the pain, and we were suppose to get to a mini lab about an hours drive from here and get the poison out of my body. But Jean took us prisoner before we could get out, and here we are, I am dying and Loki is going to die of boredom."
"Nice of you to think of my now sister."
"I am sorry Loki, I couldn't help it. Seeing Koda die like that, fast and pointless, I knew I would die the same way. Even if we got out of there, Professor Xavier would have used his Cerebro and killed us on the way to the lab. You have to look at it like this Loki and admit he would have done that."
Loki nodded. "Yes, he would have."
"So are you saying," Kurt asked. "If you die without getting that blood to the lab, that Koda and yourself would have died in vain?"
Ghost nodded. "Yeah, pretty much."
"Not if I have anything to do with it," he said untying them.
"What are you doing?" Ghost asked.
"You helped me long ago in Russia, now I help you, I get you out of here and to the lab."
She sat up. "Are you serious?"
His eyes were glowing. "Yes, if you have faith in me and if you trust me."
"I do." She said with a smile. "Thank you Kurt."
Loki stood up and frowned. "But you'll still die."
"Yes, but for a reason."
Kurt grabbed both of them and teleported to the garage. They climbed into Scott's blue car and took off.
"How far is the lab?" Kurt asked.
"Head toward the beach," Ghost said closing her eyes tight to suppress the pain. "It's an hours drive in that direction, when you see a giant water tower with the name HADES printed on it, turn left toward it, drive three miles that way and you'll come to a ravine. There is a secret door, they'll hear you coming and there will be some people out there waiting for you."
"Is there anyway to save you?" Kurt looked over his shoulder quickly to see Ghost shaking her head.
"No," she gulped. "I'm beyond redemption." She rested her head on the armrest and fell asleep.
"Beyond redemption?" Kurt looked at Loki who shrugged.
Professor Xavier knew Kurt had taken them, but if he used Cerebro to kill Ghost and Loki that might shock Kurt into crashing, and he did not want to anything to happen to Kurt. He sent Storm, Jean and Scott in the jet to retrieve them.
"Dang," Loki rubbed his eye.
"What?"
"Drive faster Kurt, Professor is after us."
Ghost sat up in the back. "What?"
Loki looked back at her. "He's sent some X-Men to get us."
"We can't go back there!" she said desperately. "We have to get this poison to the lab before it is too late."
"What are they going to do with it?" Kurt asked. "What are they going to do with the poison?"
"Break it down," Ghost said. "See what is in it, how it works, then they will make an antidote just in case someone else has the poison in their body as an attack. We only assume that Crystal was the only one with the poison, but what is to say that another ancient warrior didn't think of the same thing and try to attempt it as well?" She doubled over and breathed heavily. "I mean," she forced herself to say. "In this world there is never a real guarantee, only assumptions, theories, conjectures but nothing is really for sure."
Kurt hit the accelerator and they sped down the deserted highway at a hundred and ten.
They weren't far; Loki could see the water tower at the edge of the horizon. He looked back at Ghost who was sweating and clutching her gut.
"We're almost there sister." He whispered.
"Where are they?" she asked.
"They are in the cloud above us," Loki frowned. "They are waiting for us to stop."
"They don't want Kurt to get harmed or alarmed."
"What?" Kurt asked at the sound of his name.
"They know you are in here and they don't want to jeopardize your life." Loki said. "So as long as you're with us, we are safe."
Kurt nodded looking at the water tower. "Maybe ten miles?"
"Not even, five maybe." Loki said. "We are almost there." He wanted to be happy, but his sister was dying, and the X-Men wanted him dead as well. What on earth was there to be happy about?
A few minutes later Kurt skidded the turn at seventy miles an hour and the jet revealed itself. Loki pulled a cell phone out of his pocket and opened it automatically a number was dialed.
"Jonathan!" Loki shouted into the phone. "It's Loki, I've got Ghost and a friend here we are being tailed by a jet can you open the back hatch doors so we can speed in? What? No! No I'm not the one holding the poison. who is?" Loki snorted. "We are speeding toward the back hatch with a jet on our tail! Who the hell do you think has it?" he slammed the cell phone closed and looked out the window.
"Problems?" Kurt asked.
"No, you see that rock that juts out of the ground like a termite mound?"
"Yeah,"
"Speed straight into that."
"Into it?"
"Yeah, doors will open then you'll have about a quarter of a mile to slow down." Loki shrugged and looked back at Ghost who had blacked out. "Dang it, hurry Kurt."
Kurt pushed the accelerator to the floor, sure enough door opened and they sped inside just as the jet began to fire. He applied the brakes and they skidded to a halt.
Loki jumped out and pulled Ghost into his arms. Men in white lab coats came running toward them, some held hand guns pointed at Kurt.
"Don't shoot him," Loki said. "He's a good guy."
A gurney was brought out and they set Ghost on it.
"What happened? Was she shot?" one man asked.
"No," Loki shook his head. "She's dying."
"What?"
"The poison is here to you assholes!" Loki hissed. "Take her blood, it is in there."
The doors closed with a thud, more explosions could be heard outside, but inside, everything was dead silent.
"Koda was the one attacked, poisoned at the base of her neck, we couldn't save her, so Ghost took the blood and put it in her own body and killed Koda."
"Why did she do that?"
"Why would she have a blind girl suffer more then she has already?" Loki asked. "Take your poison, and kill Ghost before the pain gets any worse."
"You kill her," a man said. "She's your sister."
Loki looked down at his sister with a frown.
"I love you brother." She smiled. "And I'd rather die at your hands then at the hands of some stupid scientist."
The scientist shuffled about her body yet said nothing. She worked for them, but not of her free will, she was bound to them by her father's misdeeds. He had created debts she had to work out with her own life.
They drew blood and left, Loki stood over her with one of her own daggers. She smiled at him then looked over at Kurt.
"Hey," her once empty eyes full of love. "When you start to work for your priesthood, just remember that even if she doesn't accept the one hundred dollar bill, that it falls into the hands of a homeless man and helps him, and also, you super heroes," she winced in pain. "You fight long after everything seems hopeless."
"So we'll fight for you Ghost," Kurt nodded. "We'll fight and we'll find a way-"
She laughed weakly. "No thanks Kurt, it is my time to die."
Loki was crying. "But I don't want you to."
She shrugged. "I'll see you on the other side brother." She closed her eyes as the dagger plunged into her chest and severed her heart in two.
"Well," Loki started. "This is swell, just peachy. Why did you get all emotional Ghost? It's not like you to get all emotional."
Ghost sighed. "Could I have helped it? She died not knowing what it was exactly she was doing for us, her friends will never listen to us, they'll have no knowledge of what we were trying to do. We'll probably die here, I know I will, and then all of this will be for nothing."
"You can't say that!" Loki shouted. "We are going to get out of here, we are going to get that poison out of your system and we are going to come back here and explain all of it to these people."
She shook her head. "If it were only true brother," she shivered. "But what are the possibilities of getting out of here? They have psychically locked this place down; I can't even become an apparition and on top of all of that I can feel the poison in my blood. It is like fire, slowly eating its way toward my heart."
"It hasn't reached your heart yet?"
"No," she winced. "It resides in the blood, but it does not move with it. It slowly makes it way through out the body, attacking every organ except the brain and the heart. After it has attacked all organs except those and tortures them with unbelievable pain, it flows into the brain then the heart. Death is slow, and as painful as nothing ever experienced by anyone." She winced again. "No antidote and after being exposed for three hours, bleeding it out is out of the question, because it will already be in different organs at the same time and if you try to bleed it out you'll die of blood loss." She chuckled. "The bastard who designed this poison was really sick and sadistic."
"How long has it been since it has been in you?"
"It kills you after twenty hours, in sixteen hours," she winced and convulsed. "I'll be dead."
Loki gulped. "No, has it been that long already?"
"I'm sorry little brother, I couldn't help getting emotional about it. Koda," she cried. "Koda never knew it."
"Knew what?"
"That I was her uncle." A voice said. Professor Xavier wheeled into the room.
Loki looked over from his place on the bed at the Professor. He glared at him and spat in his direction. "Push off!"
He wheel right up to the bed where Loki and Ghost were bund together by rope and psychic chains.
"Why did you kill me only niece?" he demanded of Ghost.
Ghost merely buried her head in a pillow and cried harder.
"Why!" Professor yelled and used his powers to lift her head.
Ghost stopped crying suddenly and spat at the Professor. "Because I had to!"
Professor threw her back onto the bed. "No you didn't."
"Would you listen if I said I could explain?" she asked he turned his back. "No, I thought not, so why try!"
"You kill my little niece before I could tell her of our bond!"
"Then that is your own bloody fault Charles!" she screamed back at him. "You should have told her when you had the chance!"
He wheeled to the door then turned back to them. "You'll never leave here." He said and left.
Loki looked at Ghost. "So,"
"So." She sighed. "I had to kill her, otherwise she would have suffered as I am-" Ghost gasped as there appeared a cloud of blue smoke. Kurt emerged from it looking around then room then down at Loki and Ghost.
"Hello." He said without smiling.
"Why are you here?" Ghost asked. "Come to torture us?"
"No." Kurt replied. "I came to ask you why you killed her. No threats, no torture, I just want to know why."
Ghost looked up at him. "Because if I didn't, the poison would have killed her slower and more painfully, as it is killing me."
"What?" Kurt rested a hand on her shoulder.
"The poison attacks the body organs then attacks the brain and the heart and kills in a torturing pain so slow and agonizing that. that." she sighed. "That the pain can't even be described by words, had I let her live the suffering would have been unbearable and she would have suffered as I am to suffer."
"So," he concluded. "You killed her, put her blood into yours to save the poison- why?"
"Because I work for the Scientific Institute of Gaea in far north Russia. I joined the Mutant Regime of Russia so I could get here to America then I bailed on the mission and I made a living out here with word that the poison would surface somewhere in upstate New York. So I waited and told my brother I would make a living out here for us, which I did. Then it happened, I got word that the poison was close to surfacing, so I set out to find my brother and get him out of the mess before anything started, but he was already in it. Then when I saw Crystal, I knew this was the real deal. I knew someone would have to make a sacrifice to get a sample of the poison. I'll admit, I wasn't expecting it to be Koda; she had a family she knew nothing about.
"But it was her, and Crystal positioned it so we couldn't save her. So I put the poison in my body and I killed her, saving her from the pain, and we were suppose to get to a mini lab about an hours drive from here and get the poison out of my body. But Jean took us prisoner before we could get out, and here we are, I am dying and Loki is going to die of boredom."
"Nice of you to think of my now sister."
"I am sorry Loki, I couldn't help it. Seeing Koda die like that, fast and pointless, I knew I would die the same way. Even if we got out of there, Professor Xavier would have used his Cerebro and killed us on the way to the lab. You have to look at it like this Loki and admit he would have done that."
Loki nodded. "Yes, he would have."
"So are you saying," Kurt asked. "If you die without getting that blood to the lab, that Koda and yourself would have died in vain?"
Ghost nodded. "Yeah, pretty much."
"Not if I have anything to do with it," he said untying them.
"What are you doing?" Ghost asked.
"You helped me long ago in Russia, now I help you, I get you out of here and to the lab."
She sat up. "Are you serious?"
His eyes were glowing. "Yes, if you have faith in me and if you trust me."
"I do." She said with a smile. "Thank you Kurt."
Loki stood up and frowned. "But you'll still die."
"Yes, but for a reason."
Kurt grabbed both of them and teleported to the garage. They climbed into Scott's blue car and took off.
"How far is the lab?" Kurt asked.
"Head toward the beach," Ghost said closing her eyes tight to suppress the pain. "It's an hours drive in that direction, when you see a giant water tower with the name HADES printed on it, turn left toward it, drive three miles that way and you'll come to a ravine. There is a secret door, they'll hear you coming and there will be some people out there waiting for you."
"Is there anyway to save you?" Kurt looked over his shoulder quickly to see Ghost shaking her head.
"No," she gulped. "I'm beyond redemption." She rested her head on the armrest and fell asleep.
"Beyond redemption?" Kurt looked at Loki who shrugged.
Professor Xavier knew Kurt had taken them, but if he used Cerebro to kill Ghost and Loki that might shock Kurt into crashing, and he did not want to anything to happen to Kurt. He sent Storm, Jean and Scott in the jet to retrieve them.
"Dang," Loki rubbed his eye.
"What?"
"Drive faster Kurt, Professor is after us."
Ghost sat up in the back. "What?"
Loki looked back at her. "He's sent some X-Men to get us."
"We can't go back there!" she said desperately. "We have to get this poison to the lab before it is too late."
"What are they going to do with it?" Kurt asked. "What are they going to do with the poison?"
"Break it down," Ghost said. "See what is in it, how it works, then they will make an antidote just in case someone else has the poison in their body as an attack. We only assume that Crystal was the only one with the poison, but what is to say that another ancient warrior didn't think of the same thing and try to attempt it as well?" She doubled over and breathed heavily. "I mean," she forced herself to say. "In this world there is never a real guarantee, only assumptions, theories, conjectures but nothing is really for sure."
Kurt hit the accelerator and they sped down the deserted highway at a hundred and ten.
They weren't far; Loki could see the water tower at the edge of the horizon. He looked back at Ghost who was sweating and clutching her gut.
"We're almost there sister." He whispered.
"Where are they?" she asked.
"They are in the cloud above us," Loki frowned. "They are waiting for us to stop."
"They don't want Kurt to get harmed or alarmed."
"What?" Kurt asked at the sound of his name.
"They know you are in here and they don't want to jeopardize your life." Loki said. "So as long as you're with us, we are safe."
Kurt nodded looking at the water tower. "Maybe ten miles?"
"Not even, five maybe." Loki said. "We are almost there." He wanted to be happy, but his sister was dying, and the X-Men wanted him dead as well. What on earth was there to be happy about?
A few minutes later Kurt skidded the turn at seventy miles an hour and the jet revealed itself. Loki pulled a cell phone out of his pocket and opened it automatically a number was dialed.
"Jonathan!" Loki shouted into the phone. "It's Loki, I've got Ghost and a friend here we are being tailed by a jet can you open the back hatch doors so we can speed in? What? No! No I'm not the one holding the poison. who is?" Loki snorted. "We are speeding toward the back hatch with a jet on our tail! Who the hell do you think has it?" he slammed the cell phone closed and looked out the window.
"Problems?" Kurt asked.
"No, you see that rock that juts out of the ground like a termite mound?"
"Yeah,"
"Speed straight into that."
"Into it?"
"Yeah, doors will open then you'll have about a quarter of a mile to slow down." Loki shrugged and looked back at Ghost who had blacked out. "Dang it, hurry Kurt."
Kurt pushed the accelerator to the floor, sure enough door opened and they sped inside just as the jet began to fire. He applied the brakes and they skidded to a halt.
Loki jumped out and pulled Ghost into his arms. Men in white lab coats came running toward them, some held hand guns pointed at Kurt.
"Don't shoot him," Loki said. "He's a good guy."
A gurney was brought out and they set Ghost on it.
"What happened? Was she shot?" one man asked.
"No," Loki shook his head. "She's dying."
"What?"
"The poison is here to you assholes!" Loki hissed. "Take her blood, it is in there."
The doors closed with a thud, more explosions could be heard outside, but inside, everything was dead silent.
"Koda was the one attacked, poisoned at the base of her neck, we couldn't save her, so Ghost took the blood and put it in her own body and killed Koda."
"Why did she do that?"
"Why would she have a blind girl suffer more then she has already?" Loki asked. "Take your poison, and kill Ghost before the pain gets any worse."
"You kill her," a man said. "She's your sister."
Loki looked down at his sister with a frown.
"I love you brother." She smiled. "And I'd rather die at your hands then at the hands of some stupid scientist."
The scientist shuffled about her body yet said nothing. She worked for them, but not of her free will, she was bound to them by her father's misdeeds. He had created debts she had to work out with her own life.
They drew blood and left, Loki stood over her with one of her own daggers. She smiled at him then looked over at Kurt.
"Hey," her once empty eyes full of love. "When you start to work for your priesthood, just remember that even if she doesn't accept the one hundred dollar bill, that it falls into the hands of a homeless man and helps him, and also, you super heroes," she winced in pain. "You fight long after everything seems hopeless."
"So we'll fight for you Ghost," Kurt nodded. "We'll fight and we'll find a way-"
She laughed weakly. "No thanks Kurt, it is my time to die."
Loki was crying. "But I don't want you to."
She shrugged. "I'll see you on the other side brother." She closed her eyes as the dagger plunged into her chest and severed her heart in two.
