Chapter 10: The Transformation
Amanda was silent all the way back to the mansion in the Blackbird. Hank sat in the seat beside her, watching her concernedly. She sat in her seat, shaking slightly, eyes staring straight ahead, arms wrapped around herself. Her hand kept rubbing the spot on her arm absently where Magneto had injected her. The injection site was flushing an angry red, and it looked painful.
She made no move as the Blackbird touched down in its hanger, and was unresponsive as Hank unfastened her seatbelt. Jean lifted her out of the plane, and Hank held her up while he and Jean had a quick mental talk with Xavier.
Magneto did what? Was Xavier's shocked reaction.
He injected Amanda with her own virus, Jean's mental voice was grim. She's been completely unresponsive, almost catatonic, since we found her and Hank.
Take her to the Danger Room. Xavier's mindvoice was filled with worry. We don't know what form of mutation the virus will take. The Danger Room is the only one that will shield her in and everyone out until we know what's going to happen.
Hank objected. Charles, the process of mutation killed her first lab subject, he thought. He knew Charles was listening in on his mind. I should take her to the medlab. I can hook her up to an IV, give her the necessary fluids and nutrients to keep the process from draining her to the point where she dies.
We can't risk it, Hank, Xavier said firmly. If her particular mutation is a destructive one, she's going to be a danger to all of us as well as herself. Her only hope for survival is seclusion in the Danger Room.
Then let me take what I need in there, Hank said. I can stay with her, monitor her progress, do what I have to in order to keep her alive.
Xavier was silent for a moment. Take the medical equipment necessary into the Danger Room, make sure she is connected to what she needs to survive, and leave. No, Hank, I will not have you argue with me. If she has a potentially dangerous mutation, she could very well injure you. I can't have that. And Xavier refused to budge on that point.
Jean wheeled a biobed into the Danger Room as Hank held Amanda. She was still shaking and unresponsive as they laid her down on it, and Hank quickly installed an IV into her arm. He could already see some of the effects of her transformation; Her arms were much thinner, and her cheekbones were becoming more pronounced by the minute as the energy requirements of the transformation started converting her body fat to energy. As an afterthought, he wrapped straps around her and the bed, across her chest, waist, hips, and up and down the arm that held her IV. He didn't want her to accidentally rip the IV out of her arm if she began to struggle. Then he joined Xavier and the others in the observation room above the med lab.
* * *
Amanda barely noticed what was happening around her. She knew she was lying down on something soft, that she was alone, and that an IV had been placed in her arm, but everything beyond that was a blur.
Her arm hurt. It had started soon after the injection, and hadn't let up since then; it had only become worse. She moaned in anguish, sweat beading on her forehead, and dizzily tried to raise her arm, to see if there was any outward change.
She couldn't move it, and it was only after a few minutes of tugging that she realized that her arm was strapped down. "Hank," she cried, turning her head around, to stare with tear-blind eyes at the empty air around her. "Hank, where are you?"
In the observation booth, Hank felt his heart constrict painfully in his chest. Such pain and misery and anguish in her voice. He wanted to go down there, and hold her and tell her everything was going to be all right, but he wasn't even sure she was going to be all right.
Amanda blinked the tears out of her eyes, and turned to face the large observation window dominating one wall of the room. Her eyes brightened as she saw Hank, standing next to Xavier, and she stretched her free arm toward him. "Hank!"
He left his position in the observation booth, and the door opened for him as he hurried inside. He grasped her shaking hand, holding it close to his chest as he knelt beside her bed. "How do you feel?' he asked her.
"A little better now," she said quietly. "The pain kind of comes and goes, in waves. It's okay now." She looked him in the eye. "What's going on with my arm?"
"I had to immobilize it," Hank said to her. "I didn't want to take a chance on having you tear it out of your arm if you began to struggle."
"What does it look like?" Amanda asked. "The way it feels now it should be on fire."
Hank examined the arm. "It appears normal," he said. He pulled up her sleeve and looked at her whole arm. "Amanda…" he began hesitantly.
"Give me the bad news," she said quietly.
"Your upper arm has gone completely pale. Like hypopigmentation; there is no color left on your skin at all."
Amanda sighed. "I was afraid I was turning to stone or something," she said with a trace of her usual humor. "If losing my skin color is all that happens, I'll be lucky." Then she stiffened, her back arching, and she hissed a breath out through gritted teeth, and moaned in pain. As the wave receded, she relaxed, only to stiffen again with a soft cry.
Her hand curled tightly around his, and he winced at the strength of her grip. "I'm here," he said, reaching out to stroke her sweat-soaked hair. "I'm here."
Hank, came Xavier's voice in his mind. She's beginning to mutate again. You can't stay. Come out now. You can go back in when the wave passes.
He put Amanda's hand down reluctantly, with difficulty since she was gripping it so hard, and took a step back from the bed. Her eyes flew open, and she stretched her hand out toward him. "Don't leave me." Her voice was barely above a whisper, a strained sound forced out of a throat constricted with pain and the effort of not screaming. "Please, Hank, don't leave me."
Hank backed away, feeling his own throat tighten with unshed tears. "I'll be back, Amanda," he said quietly. "I promise. I'll be back." He turned around, not wanting to see the look in her eyes.
"Hank," and she was pleading now. "Hank, please don't leave me, I can't do this by myself, please, Hank, please, I love you, don't leave me!" She was crying now, tears flowing down her cheeks, and Hank turned back. He couldn't leave her, not like this, when she was in pain and she needed him so much.
He grabbed her hand as he fell to his knees beside her bed. "Amanda, I won't leave," he said, pressing her white knuckles to his lips. "I won't leave, I will stay here with you."
Hank, came Xavier's warning voice. You can't stay! If her mutation's dangerous she could hurt you unwittingly. You can't stay, Hank. Come out of there.
No, Hank thought. No, Charles, I can't. I can't leave her here to go through this alone. Even if I am risking my own life—and I do not believe I am--her mutation seems to be mere hypopigmentation (loss of color in her dermal layers) I'm willing to take that risk. She needs me, Charles. And nothing was going to make him leave.
Charles sighed. Very well, Hank.
Over the next few hours the pain came and went in waves. Amanda had brief moments of lucidity, where she could talk and respond, and Hank spent most of that time holding cups of ice water to her lips so she could drink, trying to soothe her raw throat. He broke protein and power bars into small pieces so that she could eat a little to keep her strength up, but he was appalled at the toll the mutation was taking on her body.
The process of mutation, begun at puberty, was a difficult enough process for the individual going through the mutation. He remembered being perpetually hungry, the process of mutation taking so much bodily energy that the only way to supply the extra energy the body needed to simply perform the basic biological functions was by eating. Huge amounts, quite frequently.
Apparently Amanda's mutation worked the same way, just on a far more accelerated rate. Her body was consuming so much energy it was dissolving her energy stores, the fatty layer under the skin that everyone had, in order to fuel the mutation and keep her alive. Amanda didn't have much body fat to begin with. Hank was incredibly grateful for his foresight in installing an IV, as Amanda had done, installing a nutrient feed for her second rodent subject. If he hadn't, she might very well be dead now.
He sighed and put the cup down as her body spasmed again. Her lucid periods were becoming increasingly shorter and shorter now. He put the rest of the energy bar on the table beside the cup and examined her body.
During one of her quieter moments he had removed her clothing and covered her with a blanket. She'd blushed, but didn't complain; after all, he'd seen her nude more than once.
The hypopigmentation had spread. Outward from the injection site at first, then down her arm. Once her arm was transformed, it had spread across her chest. The white skin was now creeping at an incredible rate downward from her breasts, to her waist, and was now at her hips. Hank could literally see the skin transforming before his eyes. And it seemed to be incredibly painful; Amanda had lost her voice about three hours after the transformation had begun.
He continued to hold her hand, allowing her to grip and squeeze his hand as she tried to control and handle the pain. He whispered soothing sounds in her ear, stroked the tangled, sweat-soaked hair back from her forehead, and wiped her face occasionally with a damp cloth. She couldn't speak, but in the few quiet moments she had, her eyes had been full of grateful tears.
"Don't try to talk," he said quietly. "Save your strength." He held the straw of the cup to her lisp again.
Six hours later, he was exhausted, both emotionally and physically, and Amanda was beyond recognizing anything. Her eyes were closed, her breathing was rapid, shallow, and harsh in her throat, and her grip had loosened. The only sign that she was still alive was the occasional spasm or jerk of her body as another wave of pain wracked her.
Jean came in. "Hank," she said gently. "It's been almost twelve hours. Amanda won't notice if you go and grab a bite, or some rest. She's past noticing anything now. There's dinner waiting for you upstairs."
Hank shook his head, looking down at the still form of the girl on the bed in front of them. "I cannot, Jean. Amanda needs me, and I promised her that I would not leave her. I cannot leave."
Jean reached gently into his mind. "Hank, you won't be leaving her, just refreshing yourself. Go on." She emphasized her suggestion with a quiet telepathic nudge.
Hank relented. "I'll be right back," he said to Jean.
She took his seat beside Amanda's bed.
* * *
Hank opened his eyes slowly, and rubbed them. They felt like someone had rubbed sandpaper into them. Maybe whoever was shaking him had poured something gritty into his eyes. Bobby had done that to him once. It had hurt like hell too.
"Hank?" the voice wasn't Bobby's. It was "Warren?"
"Yeah, it's me," Warren said, giving him a hand up out of bed. "Something's wrong downstairs. Everyone else's asleep. I figured I'd call you."
Hank was instantly awake, and loping down the hallway as Warren ran behind him. "What exactly is wrong?" he asked as they ran.
"I don't know," Warren told him. "The monitors all seem all right, nothing changed, but she's started like, yanking at her restraints. And her left arm keeps reaching for her shoulder, like she's trying to scratch an itch. Her skin's all swollen there…"
Hank rounded the corner and skidded to a halt in front of the observation window, eyes wide. Amanda was having seizures, it looked like her upper body was trying to lunge up from the table, and her free arm was flailing around. "Warren!" Hank bellowed, grabbing a couple of straps. "Hold her while I strap this arm down before she hurts herself!"
He tried several times to catch Amanda's left arm, and failed. She kept pulling her arm out of his grasp and clawing at her shoulder, raking it with her fingernails, drawing blood from the broken skin. Her eyes were still tightly closed, but Hank could see that her entire lower body had gone white. All that was left was her throat and face.
He finally captured her arm in a firmer grip than he would ordinarily use, and he hoped he wasn't grabbing her wrist hard enough to bruise of break it. She kept trying to twist her arm out of his grasp, and he pushed it down to the bed and tried to strap it down.
Her eyes opened, and he nearly dropped her wrist. The white pallor of her skin had spread over half her face, and he watched her eyes turn from their normal bluish-gray to a faded gray, and then to a startling, vivid silver. He recovered from his shock quickly, grabbed her wrist, and tried to strap it down when a sound made him freeze.
"Hank." The voice was hardly recognizable as hers, her throat was so raw from screaming. He leaned over her as she spoke again. "Hank. No."
"No what?"
She went suddenly wild again, crying out in pain as her arm scratched wildly at her shoulder. "Let me go." The whisper started so low he almost couldn't hear it, and built up volume as she repeated it until it was a loud, agonized scream. "let me go let me go let me go Let Me Go LET ME GO!"
Warren suddenly began to unfasten the buckles holding her body down. "Warren, what are you doing!?" Hank cried.
Warren didn't stop. "Hank, get that IV out of her arm, now! I don't have time to explain!" Hank got the needle out of Amanda's arm just as Warren unfastened the last buckle.
Amanda shot up off the table and half-stumbled, half ran across the room, falling to her knees finally in the corner. Her body was so thin every bone stood out under her skin, and it only emphasized the obscenely grotesque swelling on her shoulderblades. As he and Warren watched, stunned, the swollen lumps protruded, ugly and terrifying, on her shoulders. Amanda screamed and reached backeward with both hands, digging her nails into the lumps awkwardly. Blood ran from them, and Hank was about to run to her, capture her hands and keep her from ripping the skin off her shoulders when Warren stopped him. "Wait," he said.
The skin on those bumps bulged, then split under her nails, and Hank stared in shock as something gray pushed itself out of her shoulders. Crying with relief, Amanda slumped to the floor, and Hank barely noticed her hair turning silver as the gray, membraneous things unfolded, much like a butterfly's wings when the adult emerged from its chrysalis, and resolved into a pair of shiny, wet, crystal clear, slightly iridescent wings.