It's dark, for all the talk of school and class and there's something surreal about still having a house key in my pocket. Of course, if my parents changed the locks, breaking in isn't going to be a problem. As I look up at the awnings from the sidewalk, the outer garage light flicks on. A simple motion detector. A little slow. They don't have my system on, that's for sure. Of course, I already checked that by flicking some fair sized pebbles into the driveway. They weren't vaporized . . . so I judged it to be . . . safe in one sense or another.
No one appears to be home. It's not terribly late and my parents had a habit of working long into the night . . . but what am I saying? It's been twenty years. They're, what, sixty somethings now? Maybe even retired and bed at eight is perfectly normal. It's not as though I've been around to watch.
I don't like the darkness in the windows anyway. It's unfamiliar. Unfamiliar is bad, you see -- because unfamiliar can mean a change of habit, or it can mean that they moved away and there's some cranky old guy wheezing upstairs with one finger on a police alert button, just waiting for some hoodlum to break in.
Of course, if someone did call the cops on me, there'd be that whole awkward question thing again. Save, even harder to explain, when the only photo ID I have is my driver's licence from 1977 and let me tell you do I match the picture.
So I walk very quietly up to the porch and find a window to peer in. It's dark, yes, and I could go for Callisto's eyes, but the basic shadow-shapes of the furniture seem about right.
Ah, there's nothing for it. I walk back to the driveway, select a pebble, and cautiously approach the door. The pebble bounces lightly off the doorknob without mishap and I finally fit the key into the lock, turn . . .
And it clicks. Great.
Not smart to leave your locks unchanged for twenty years, but we can fix that later.
I push the door open with my shoulder, still trying to keep down the noise. I toy with the idea of leaving the lights off, just in case there really is a cranky and paranoid old man upstairs, but decide that tripping over coffee tables and banging against every corner in the living room would be more disruptive anyway. I turn the lights on.
And the furniture is mostly the same. There's a lamp in the corner I don't recognize and the rug is different, but it's otherwise all there and neat and not-abandoned and there's no reason to believe my parents aren't just out or sleeping.
It's still home.
I close the door behind me and am about to walk boldly right out of the entryway when I notice I'm leaving footprints.
Not mud, either.
"Oh . . . " I sit down on the linoleum and tug my shoes off, moving to wipe the tread-stains off with the slack of my shirt (hey, it'll wash out) -- but my shirt is . . . pretty sodden.
" . . . crap," I finally finish, standing back up in my socks and holding my shoes together in one hand. My socks have to be clean enough to brave the carpet, because I'm getting out of these clothes as quickly as possible and why aren't the voices ever quite as efficient as they claim to be? Hiding stuff again. This had better be the last time something is hidden, because . . .
Blast it, none of this is possible!
Oh, now, you figure that one out. Quick, Forge. Very quick.
I tiptoe as rapidly as I can through the living room and up the stairs (nearly tripping on the top step) and into the bathroom where I can wrench on the light and kick the door shut in the same instant.
And wish my parents didn't have a thing for half-length bathroom mirrors.
Okay, everyone has a thing for half-length bathroom mirrors. They're very nice for squeezing zits and brushing hair and examining your pectorals, assuming you have them. But sometimes, it'd be nice to just be able to strip off your clothes and dive into the shower without having to look at yourself in between. You know, when you've been conked out in a virtual coma for, I dunno, five days and your hair is all matted and nasty and your eyes are swollen shut and you could use a few thousand applications of deoderant before they'd . . .
"That's not going to wash out." It's back again, see, the shirt that I could have sworn I was wearing before someone was so clever as to use my head for target practice. It's not the only thing that's back. There's some other stains and clumps I wasn't quite as aware of, as they probably all took place in a split second where I wasn't paying much attention.
I hope I didn't drip on the stairs. Or leave little trails on the sidewalk as soon as I was out of eye-shot of the mutant kids, like I did the first time something large and rather vascular decided to explode.
Those are the sort of things that prompt those awkward questions.
Oh well, business as usual. But if I wash, it had better go away this time.
I'll even clean the tub afterwards.
If I can find the Clorox.
I pull off the shirt and wish there was somewhere to put it where it wouldn't automatically make a mess. There isn't. I'm not capable of suspending laundry in air, so it'll go on the floor. No, wait. The garbage. It's in remarkably good shape for all it's been through, but I think even Salvation Army might object to that particular kind of tie-dye. Eh heh. Retro.
Pants are in slightly better shape, but, you know what? I don't really want to wear any of this again. It gets old. Unzip, let it fall, scoop the mass up and stuff that in after the shirt.
Which leaves me in underwear, socks, and little necklace-thingy. Underwear's still partially white, but only partially. Socks are still fine (although the trickle is getting a little close). Oh, what the hey. It all goes. Even the necklace thingy. I'm sure they have stores that cater to that kind of taste in psuedo-jewelry and, no, I'm not that sentimental about a thingy I only wore into hell because I didn't think to take it off.
Look how far I've come. I can be perfectly calm about a little blood. It's not as though it means anything any more. The sources are all nicely healed . . . if they are healed by unknown and possibly illegal means, well, I shouldn't complain. Just get in the shower and finally wash it off.
Man, it's going to take hours.
The shower curtain is a dark and photo-realistic representation of dolphins. My fingerprints scarcely show on the edges. You'd have to squint. The taps are different. Less ornate than they used to be. Just little metal knobs, one with a times-new-roman C, the other with an H. I have to play with them for about half a minute before the temperature's right. Pull the shower node and here we go.
The water on my back is more shocking than it should be, but, yes, it's been a while. Showers weren't particularly, ah, necessary when things were either cleaned or stubbornly stayed dirty by the whim of the great She. Well, let's be honest. It's not so greatly different under the reign of the powerful and imposing Tittering Inner Voices, who can't clean anything, but can pretend for a while so your new friends aren't terribly frightened by the mess.
And, yes, again, I should be dying of gratitude for their role in pulling me from near-death into a glorious role in the dethroning of the fiend, not to mention their role in pulling me from death-death into . . . reality. I should. But the trouble with these near-death experiences and seemingly divine hands dragging you back into life is that the tone is all wrong. I admit I have my own ideas on the subject, but I don't think many people think of God or even angels as disembodied voices that mutter rather incessantly and sound suspiciously like symptoms of movie-schizophrenia.
That's an idea. I'm not a thirty-eight-year-old man in a pretty-dang-abused eighteen year-old body. I'm a thirty-eight-year-old man in a thirty-eight-year-old body who got checked into the happy place quite a while ago and is still so immersed in his delusions that he hasn't noticed yet.
That'd make more sense. If you think about it, the last twenty years of my "life" has bordered just a little on the surreal. The crazy.
The "what was your mom smoking when she had you?"
Interesting to put it that way. That's still unresolved. The whole question of "Okay, if everyone who was supposedly changed and shaped by her was actually a mutant all along, but you weren't ever a mutant, and you're obviously not entirely hers either and there are little voices that can repair your body and hide wounds from even your senses when they're inconvenient . . .
. . . well, then, what are you?"
Twenty years and still don't have the faintest idea.
The shampoo bottles have changed (well, I'd rather hope they would have). More, how to put it . . . Not art decor per se, not exactly crafty (if it was crafty, there'd be little hemp strings coming out from under the cap), but this whole semi-transparent logo thing, very classy, I'm sure. I start gathering up my hair more towards the top of my scalp (more manageable that way) and a new wash of released red whips down my back for an uncomfortably long duration.
That was probably one hey of an exit wound when it was still there. Don't need to think about it. Hopefully not any more.
It's some time and the water has turned tepid and enough blood has gone down the drain to more than satisfy Hitchcock before I feel clean enough to venture out of the shower. And immediately have to go to the bathroom. Haven't done that in a while either. It's doubtless pure instinct that I still remember how to use the toilet paper.
Now for getting dry and getting dressed. I wrap a towel around my waist, check my feet just to make sure, and run down the hall towards what was my room and pray that they haven't boxed up everything and stuffed it in storage somewhere.
I'm not sure whether I expect my room to still be there at all. You can't expect anything to still be there after twenty years and just because your parents appear to be still existing and your house hasn't turned into a rotting junk heap of corroded boards and pipes doesn't mean that your bedroom is still your bedroom. I mean, maybe they adopted to, y'know, fill the void, assuming I left one. Maybe there's rubber duckies strewn all over the floor and my clothes have been torn apart and re-sewn together as blankies.
Okay, maybe that's a little ridiculous, but you never know.
But when I finally pry open the door that was mine, it . . . well, it's still mine. Only cleaner. They took the underwear off the floor, at least. I tighten my grip on the towel, walk over to the bureau . . . my bureau . . . and tug a drawer open with a hesistancy so sudden and pervasive it constricts my movements a little.
There are clothes in the drawer. They are my clothes. And they don't smell particularly well -- I mean, they've been gathering must for how long? -- but they'll do. I drop the towel and just rip on the clothes as quickly as I can. I'm not interested in either savoring my nakedness or my terrific change in wardrobe. Forgive me if I still feel vulnerable in halfway situations like this. Never liked being caught with pants still dangling around my ankles at the best of times.
Anyway. I'm dressed. Sitting on the bed I haven't been near since the night Mom leaned over it with a gun to my head. Ah, that was thrilling. Marked the high-stress point of my life until the next morning. And the next. And the . . .
Just hard for me to believe that it's over. That I can be, you know, normal now. That I can just sit on a bed and not have to worry about it exploding. Wow.
Of course, normal is relative and I haven't so much as seen my parents yet. They might want me to move out. After all, I'm thirty-eight.
Oh gah, I still don't know how to deal with anything. What on earth am I going to tell them? "Hi. Mom. Dad. Um, I'm home!" Not that I know or anything, but they might want more of an explanation and I'm scared to death of explanations. They're going to be pretty upset as it is. There are some things they don't need to know. Like the whole . . . um, shooting thing. Yeah. I can skip over that. No problem.
I lie back and stare at the ceiling. Ce-e-iling. Used to do that a lot, I think. Looks the same. Funny white plaster stuff with little ridges that you could run your finger along in bored minutes, if you were tall enough. Or were standing on the bed. Good times.
And then, because we all know my life has this kind of timing, the doorbell rings.
No decent salesman drops by at this hour. Wouldn't it be fun if my parents are on vacation and it's the poor neighbor taking care of the cat, wondering why the lights are on? Wouldn't it be fun to go trip-trapping downstairs and scare the hey out of her?
Not really. I stay on the bed and the doorbell rings again. And again. I have a niggling little fear that maybe my parents locked themselves out . . . but if so they wouldn't be ringing the doorbell, would they? Absolutely no reason to go down there. None at . . .
I can swear it's against my will that I go down the stairs at all and end up at the door. I don't even look through the peephole before turning the knob and swinging that door open and since I know I'm generally too paranoid to do anything like that, I'm not all that surprised when I see Xavier's wheelchair perched on the doorstop. I express my lack of surprise by slamming the door in his face. Hurrah for self expression.
Forge. Open the door.
"Uh huh, yeah. I'm going to open the door." I lean against the wall and whistle loudly.
Open the door. I need to talk to you.
In a brief moment of childishness, I just have to plug my ears and turn up the whistling.
Forge!
"Oh, all right." And I open the door again. He hasn't moved, of course. "What do you want?"
"What do you think I want, Forge? I heard from two of my students you had returned. I needed to see how you were."
Well, duh, where have I been for twenty years? "I'm great! Terrific! I bet you don't age half this well!"
Xavier sighs, but gets a suspicious probing look that lasts several seconds before the usual concerned indifference melts away into a wince. "Ah. No, I don't." He blinks, momentarily discomfited. Weird. "I see you've had quite the time."
"Oh, no, been very dull. Wanted my yo-yo constantly. Pined over it, even." I don't know what it is about Xavier that makes me act so difficult around him, really! I mean, I shouldn't hold that much of a grudge. He was just there. He wasn't terribly warm and fuzzy, but that's just fine. I mean, technically. As it is, I just don't like the guy and he's hardly the first person I want to have a heart-to-heart with.
"I understand if you don't want to talk about it," he says with some strain in his voice that might be frustration. "But I came more to warn you than to comfort you. I would suggest you come back to the Inst-"
"No."
"Forge, you can't put your dislike of me over your own safety."
"Why on earth wouldn't I be safe here, Xavier? There is no she any more. She's gone. I can live like a real person, even if I'm not one, so if you would be so kind . . ."
Xavier gives me a look that borders on the sincere pity. Wow, gee, he's only done that once before. "I'm not sure that's true, Forge."
"It'd better be. I'm done."
"You have right to be done. But that doesn't mean you are. If nothing else, Forge, how are you still alive?"
"Ah. That." Don't have a clue. "The chips fall as they will. There's always a second chance. The chickens are hatched and duly counted and, Xavier, if you're not going to give me anything more concrete than that as a warning, I'm going to bed."
"I don't have a concrete warning to . . . give," Xavier counters cautiously. "However, I can tell you that it may be your reappearance that set off enough alarms to put several government agencies on red alert."
"Say wha? How'd you know that?"
"Forge, I keep an Institute of children who can outfight the National Guard if pressed. I have a few very important contacts in high places for that purpose."
"Alarms? But why on earth . . . "
"This particular contact also informed me that the government had an extensive confidential file on you."
"Well . . . yeah," I say with more vehemence than I feel. "I did . . . work for it, you know. I mean, they're probably still wondering where that atom bomb I promised them went."
Xavier raises an eyebrow.
"Kidding."
"Of course. Forge, this personal file of yours has been updated every day for the entirity of your life."
"Eh? Why?"
"That's all the information I was given."
I run a hand through my hair, squinting at one of Xavier's wheels, as it's there. "That's pretty odd. What would they have to say for the past twenty years?"
"I don't know. But it worries me."
"Listen, Xavier . . . it might be a program glitch." I purposefully avoid the alarm matter. Coincidence, man, coincidence.
"Possibly. But it might not be. Did your former employers ever give you reason to worry about their intentions? How much do you trust the government?"
"How much do I trust anyone?"
Xavier shakes his head. "In many respects, you haven't changed much, have you?"
"Honestly, Xavier. The past twenty years haven't given me any new reasons to be as trusting as you wanted me to be."
"Are you capable of healing, Forge?"
"Well, gee whilikers, time will tell, won't it?"
"Perhaps it won't. Forge, it's your right to know. Your brain waves aren't any more human than they were before you left. If anything, they're less."
I blink, but I don't have the energy to be terribly surprised. Why should I be? Why should everything be all right? Especially if Xavier's stalking my doorstop. "So what? We both know I'm not a mutant, but I'm still acting like one. So let's say we both know I'm not human either, but I can very well act like one of those, too."
"Forge, I know all this means much more to you than you let on. You haven't changed at all. Why can't you talk to me?"
"Because you're Xavier. It's like a high school reunion. You turn into the kid you were back then and, man, you're just like one of my classmates from '78. Like a best buddy I was trying to forget."
"Don't think I can't feel your anger, Forge. But it's terribly misdirected."
"I don't care. You're always walking right in here, into me, and telling me who I am whether I wanna hear it or not. And I'm not the same, Xavier. I'm not. I'm just the same with you." I want to do something dramatic. I want to pull out the arm the she gave me twenty years ago and stick in his face until he understands, but all I can do is cling to the doorjamb and try not to look like I'm leaning on it in the same moment.
"Forge, I'm only trying to say that there are factors that you need to deal with before moving on like you say you want to. You're alive and you shouldn't be. The government appears to be very interested in what you are and you're not exactly on the cusp of well-adjustment whatever happens. You're just as rawly bitter as you were twenty years ago, only it's tinged with something much more worrisome now. If I were a psychiatrist, I'd be forcing you on very strong anti-depressants at the very least."
"Look, if you think I'm going to go suicidal, I've been through that phase and it didn't work. I'm fine. Just give me time. Man, I just got back, you know."
"I also need your help."
I sneer almost without meaning to. "Well, I could've figured that. But, man, last time you needed help . . . "
"It's about Scott. And Kurt."
"Oh." Funny how quickly I deflate. Yeah . . . I can maybe see why those two would need help.
"I need you to visit the Institute from time to time for observation purposes. Please. Every other student in my Institute, past and present, every mutant I've interacted with has had human brain patterns. Except you. And, to a certain extent, yes, Scott and Kurt. In their disparate ways, they don't appear to be fully human either. Not . . . not to your extent, but not fully human . . . "
"Oh gah."
"As you say and I can confirm, from both your memories . . . and . . . Scott's, your she is dead. It can't be her influence and . . . I can tell you, I have observed several mutants who were also from that particular . . . "
"Callisto?" I have to blurt.
He pauses. "Yes."
"Where is she?"
"Here. In Bay-"
"Where?"
"I can't give you an address, Forge. Like most of those in your she's world, she inhabits the sewers now . . . "
I'm half off the doorstop before he stops me.
"Forge, patience, please. I'll help you locate her if you'll hear me out."
"Let's walk, then."
"Very well."
I help him (a little grudgingly) down to the sidewalk and we start moving. Slowly, to accomadate his wheelchair. Blast wheelchairs.
"As I was saying, I have observed other mutants presumably under the control of your she. They appear to be human. All of them. Callisto included. Again, you three are the only that would give me any doubt as to basic humanity. All three of you have extensive government files, yours being the most so. But only, apparently, because you've lived longer."
Hey, wait! "Kurt's Raven's kid, isn't he?"
"Ah . . . "
"You don't know? Where is Raven, anyway?"
"Bayville. She is the vice principal of the school, in fact."
"Eerie. Kurt sounds as German as all out. But he's gotta be Raven's. I mean, the color, the teeth, the eyes. Not the tail, but . . . "
"Raven did spend some time in Bavaria," Xavier accedes. "Along with Magneto."
" . . . not you?" Always liked Magneto better.
"No. Magneto and I had . . . differences and he and Raven took their leave."
"Where's Magneto now?"
"I am not sure."
"And you don't know who Kurt's parents are?"
"He was adopted."
Something about the context that's in makes my eyes narrow. "From who? I mean, he's gotta have papers."
"He doesn't."
"Find him in the woods?"
"That's not something he or I knows. Forge . . . "
"See, Kurt doesn't look human. I mean, his face is pretty human, but that's about as far as you can stretch it. Really like to know who his dad . . . "
"Forge, Kurt is not human in the same way you are not human. The variation is only in the extent of the anomaly, not the anomaly itself."
"What anomaly are we talking about, exactly? You keep talking about how my brain waves are funny . . . well, how are they funny?"
"It's difficult to put into words. Your brainwaves mimic those of a normal human in form, but it's almost as if they're created of a different material. This is the full description of your brainwaves. In both Scott and Kurt, the alien brainwaves are sporadic. They mainly flare up during power use and . . . " His brow furrows, "apparently when they're being controlled, as they most certainly were today."
"Gah, there is that."
"Neither could I reverse their compulsion or even so much as recieve a clear picture of what they were doing or thinking."
"A-all right, I can see why that'd worry you. Poor kids being flung into possibly inescapable dimensions against their will . . . "
"Forge, you've never been compulsed in such a manner, have you?"
"No . . . ah, no. Never. There was a couple of times the she made me act against my will, but I was mostly aware . . . erg. Well, there was the five years I was catatonic. That probably counts."
"It's probably not the same thing. Forge, I have no doubt that Scott and Kurt were compulsed in such a way to retrieve you."
"I guess that would make sense. Be a little too convenient otherwise."
Xavier's voice takes on a surprising edge. "I need to know who is doing this to my students . . . and, yes, why and how. If you can somehow get to the root of their . . . mental deviancy, that might just help all of us, you included. Because, whoever they are, they're certainly after you."
I groan. "Again. Listen, Xavier. I like Scott a lot. I think you might've figured that . . . and for the five minutes I got to talk to him, I think Kurt's a pretty okay guy. I'm all for helping them. Cross my heart and hope to die, man, you don't have to feed me any bribes about this. If you'd told me straight out . . ."
"The main danger is still yours."
"I don't care that much. I'm about all right with getting myself killed in the bargain."
"Forge."
"I'm not serious!"
"Hmmm. Of course, that would all be assuming you can die."
"'If you cut me, do I not bleed?'"
"Your healing capability may very well surpass Wolverine's, Forge."
"Wolvie-who?"
"It's not important. You'll meet him soon enough." Xavier pauses his wheelchair, of course, for the sole purpose of steepling his fingers. I sigh and stop as well. "I would like you to visit the Institute tomorrow, if you possibly can."
"Xavier, I'd like to see my parents first . . . "
"Your parents will be back in the morning. They are on a joint business trip in Boston."
I squint at him. "Isn't that a little beyond your range?"
"I checked the neighbor who happens to be taking care of the cat."
"O-oh."
"Forge, will you visit the Institute tomorrow?"
"Are we even heading toward Callisto?"
"We're close enough. Forge, I want your word."
"Fine, fine, you have it."
"Then follow me."
It's only a matter of yards before Xavier's wheechair slips down the side of the curb and runs up against a manhole. "This cover is loose. Lift it up and she'll be within shouting distance."
"Great." I crouch down beside the metal and begin prying at it with my fingers.
"Forge, it has been ten years."
"I know, I know. Just wanna say hi, all right?"
"Indeed?"
I glare up at him. "Honestly, Xavier, what do you think I'm going to do?"
"I know quite well what happened with Raven."
"That was twenty years ago! I was eighteen!"
"You still are."
"Ga-a-ah, nothing happened then." I shove the cover off, which takes an embarressing amount of my strength. "Besides, like Raven, she outclasses me in weight and over all athleticism, right? Assuming I wanted to, I still couldn't do anything she didn't want, right?" I inhale to continue and have to wince. "Man . . . why a sewer?"
Xavier shakes his head. "Just be careful."
"I'm careful!" I take a nervous hold on the rim of the manhole and lower myself into the blackness, toes flailing for a ladder.
"And . . . Forge? Kindly stop referring to yourself as thirty-eight? It's terribly annoying when I happen to know that you've only been properly conscious for five of those years . . ."
I roll my eyes and just drop. Figure what can't kill me can only break my leg.
