Chapter Six

"What are we gonna do?" asked Iceman.

"We can still get out on the helicopter," I said.

"No, we'd never fit all of us in there," said Cyclops. "Bobby, can't you just freeze the bomb?"

"I don't know what a sudden drop in temperature might do to it. I can't take the risk."

"Let me see it."

I hurried after them as they ran up into the interior of the second jet. Shock and Helios were already there, and they looked up as we arrived.

"It's counting down," Shock said nervously.

The timer display read three minutes thirty seconds.

"Any ideas?" I asked them.

Cyclops turned to Helios, "Dominic, get Kurt in here. Gary, go and check on Pyro."

I had already hurried from their jet and across the ground towards the sanctuary before I realised I had just obeyed his order unquestioningly. Part of me felt angry, the part that still hated the X-Men – Cyclops wasn't my leader and had no place telling me what to do – but at the same time, part of me knew that it would be stupid to argue with him just for the sake of it. I cast it out of my mind as I approached the group near the sanctuary. I feared the worst when I saw the tears still pouring from Gemini's eyes, but then I saw Pyro was sitting up, and I realised they were tears of joy. She had her arms around him and she rested her head against his chest, allowing her relief to overtake her. For a moment Pyro hesitated, then he slid his arm around her shoulders. Gemini hugged him a little tighter and gave him a little kiss on the cheek. Anyone who hadn't known them would have presumed instantly that they were father and daughter. They even looked something alike. I knew that in Gemini's heart Pyro was her father, but I wasn't so sure he thought of her that way. I remembered what Mystique had said about him. I turned my attention to Crusader, who lay unconscious beside them, and I asked, "Is she OK?"

Rogue, who was kneeling over my sister, nodded, "She's just tired. She'll be fine."

"Good."

I turned and hurried back to the jet to see what was happening. When I got there Nightcrawler was in the process of manhandling the bomb down the landing ramp. It looked pretty heavy.

"Pyro's OK," I told them. "What are you guys doing?"

"I will teleport this as far out to sea as I can," he said.

As I watched he looked out towards the horizon, then with that very distinctive sound he teleported away from the island. My long-range vision was good, though not quite as good as my sister's, and I could just about see him appearing on the horizon to the east. He was only there for a second, and I made out the distant shape of the explosive dropping into the ocean. A second later Nightcrawler reappeared in front of us.

"Ten seconds," said Helios, glancing at his watch.

I counted down in my head and we all felt the force of the explosion when it came, shaking the earth on which we stood, flinging countless gallons of sea water into the air in all directions from the centre of the blast. I braced myself and managed to keep my footing as the reverberations peaked, then slowed, then ceased.

"Everybody OK?" Cyclops asked.

Nobody said anything to suggest otherwise, and he turned to me. For a moment I wondered why, then I realised. With Pyro still recovering from his injury, Vertigo knocked out and Recyclo gone, he was looking to me as the Brotherhood's most senior figure.

"All right," he said. "Now perhaps you could tell me what that was all about. I thought he was one of your people. Why did he just try to kill Pyro? Why did he leave a bomb to destroy you along with us?"

I looked blankly at him, shrugging helplessly, "If I knew I'd tell you. It doesn't make any sense at all."

"He's my brother," said Helios, shaking his head in disbelief. "I can't believe it. I can't believe that he just tried to kill us."

"Your brother?" one of the X-Men asked him.

"Yeah. I met him that time the Brotherhood came to the mansion looking for Pyro. He's my twin; we must have been separated at birth. I never knew he even existed until then. I've no idea where he was or what happened to him."

"Pyro knows," I said.

Then another thought occurred to me. I asked Cyclops, "How did you know to come here? Was it a lucky guess or – ?"

"No. We received an anonymous communication about an hour ago, telling us the co-ordinates of your base. We never guessed you might be operating from Magneto's island. I guess it was just too obvious."

About an hour ago…who could have sent a communication an hour ago? There was no way to send anything from the island – Pyro had banned anyone except himself from using the computers to prevent any more information leaking out – and the others had been with me the whole time. None of them could have sent anything. Unless…of course. Recyclo had been left alone using one of the computers in Van Gaarde's research lab. That had been about an hour ago, hadn't it? Had he sent the message to the X-Men? Was he the one who was giving them information? Was he the traitor?

If so, it didn't make any sense at all. Recyclo hated the X-Men even more than Gemini did, and I wouldn't have thought that possible. He had just tried to kill them. Why would he be giving away our position to them? Why would he be helping them in their attempts to kill us? What other reason could he have for letting the X-Men know where we would be? Unless…could it be the other way around? Could he have been giving away our position so that they could confront us, so that we could kill them? Had he been trying to draw the X-Men towards us to give himself an opportunity to kill them? Did he hate them enough to deliberately engineer something like that? I didn't know. I didn't know anything about him or his past. Only Pyro knew. Cyclops was already making his way over towards our leader, and I followed him.

Pyro, supported by Gemini, was just rising to his feet, looking a little dizzy and disoriented from the amount of blood he had lost. He swayed a little and she steadied him. Gemini glared at Cyclops as he approached, and she began holding on to Pyro a little tighter. Pyro blinked and his eyes focused on Cyclops.

"What do you want?" he asked, instinctively putting a protective arm around Gemini.

"I want to know why that guy just tried to kill us."

"What are you talking about?"

"He means Recyclo," I said. "He knifed you then fled on one of the jets, He left a bomb on the other one, but Kurt – I mean Nightcrawler – managed to get rid of it."

"Recyclo tried to kill him?" a shocked Gemini asked. "But why?"

Pyro frowned, then said, "It must have been because I had just agreed to release Crusader. He must have thought I was giving in to the X-Men, maybe even agreeing to a truce with them. He doesn't like them very much," he finished sarcastically.

"But why try to kill you?" Gemini demanded. "After everything you've done for him!"

"Because Recyclo is insane," Pyro sighed. "I've known for years, I've always known. I never told any of you because I thought I could keep him under control. I guess I was wrong."

"But what's wrong with him? Why is he like that? What happened to him?"

Pyro looked at her, "The same thing that happened to you. Recyclo too was kept in a research laboratory and used as a test subject. The difference was that you were taken when you were eight and I rescued you when you were ten. In other words, you were only there for two years. Recyclo was stolen from his foster family when he was three years old. I didn't discover and rescue him until he was thirteen, by which time his mind was warped and distorted beyond any possible repair."

Storm shook her head angrily, "In that case he should have been given therapy, not used as a weapon! Pyro, you're using these children, using them to further your own ends without caring one jot what it does to them or their mental stability!"

Pyro sneered, "If you aren't willing to help them, somebody has to. He'd probably still be in that laboratory if I'd left it up to you."

"Shut up, both of you," Cyclops interrupted. "We don't have time to argue. There's too much at stake. We've got to find the Plague cure and we've got to find out where Recyclo is going. He could kill a lot of people if his mind is as unstable as you say."

"Don't forget the Horsemen," I said.

"Right. We think we might know what it is they're trying to do. Oculus – I mean your father – has been using Cerebro to try and locate them. We think we know where they're based."

"Do go on," Pyro said dryly. "And don't forget I still haven't agreed to this alliance that you seem to think is in place."

"You might change your mind when you hear what Oculus found out."

"Oh, the suspense is killing me. Do tell."

"I'd rather wait until everyone has regained consciousness, and speak to all of them. We should let them rest somewhere. Do you have an infirmary?"

"No."

"Well, let's get them inside at any rate."

I sat at the side of the bed and looked down at the still sleeping form of Crusader. There was still turmoil in my mind. I couldn't decide on my feelings for her. I couldn't decide what I was going to say to her when she woke up. Did I still hate her? Was she still my enemy? Did she still hate me? Had she ever done so? My emotions were all mixed up, a crazy concoction of anger, guilt, forgiveness and sorrow. She hadn't been lying when she had told me Marina was still alive. I knew that now. She had been telling the truth and I had refused to believe her. We had done battle when we shouldn't have, and I had caused her extreme pain and terrible injury when perhaps I should not have. Was it fate that we had ended up on opposing sides? Was it unavoidable? Or was one of us, or both of us, to blame?

I glanced across to the other bed. Vertigo still lay motionless, with Gemini standing over him. She had managed to let go of Pyro for a few minutes to come and see how her friend was doing. She saw me looking at her and gave me a smile. I returned it, then returned my attention to Crusader. This bedroom was Vertigo and Recyclo's – Vertigo's now – and the bed she was lying in had been Recyclo's. I still didn't know what to make of him. Pyro had helped explain it to an extent, but I couldn't and had never been able to fathom the grey-eyed psychopath who had tried to kill us all. Why had he joined the Brotherhood anyway if he didn't care for Pyro or the rest of us at all? Had he only wanted to take the opportunity to kill the humans who had hurt him, and the X-Men who protected them? I knew that was Gemini's reason for belonging to Pyro's group – well, one of her reasons. But Recyclo – I had the feeling that nobody, not even Pyro, knew what truly lay within his heart. Was he irredeemably deranged, as Pyro had suggested? Had his psyche been damaged beyond any recovery by years of mental anguish? Gemini had suffered that way for two years and it was painfully obvious what it had done to her. Recyclo had had it five times as long – I could only imagine the mess his mind was in.

Gemini gave a little gasp as Vertigo began to stir. His hand twitched, he gave a low groan, then his eyes slowly opened.

"Hey," Gemini greeted him.

He blinked, "Wow. If I get to see a beautiful girl every time I wake up, maybe I should get knocked out more often."

She blushed, "You OK?"

"Yeah. Have I been out long? Did I miss anything?"

"Nah, not much. Just that the Plague has mutated to kill mutants, Recyclo tried to kill us, and we're allied with the X-Men."

His eyes widened, then he slipped back into his usual I-don't-care expression, "Right. Just a normal day at the office, then."

"Pretty much. I – " she hesitated.

"What?"
She looked away uncertainly, "I'm just confused about my feelings, that's all. My feelings for Pyro…my feelings for – for you…my feelings for the X-Men…"

"I thought you hated them."

"I do – I did – maybe I still do. But – but they saved Pyro's life when they could have just let him die. Everything I know about them would have led me to believe they'd just have let him die. But they didn't. Maybe – I can't believe I'm saying this – maybe they're not the monsters I thought they were. I never thought I'd ever hear myself saying that, but they saved Pyro's life. You have no idea how much that means to me."

"You like him?"

"I love him. No, not like that. It's like he's my dad. Or at least I'd like him to be."

"You said something about me…"

Gemini blushed once more, "I'll – I'll talk about that when we're alone."

"Alone?"

He looked over and saw me sitting beside the other bed. Surprise crossed his face and I raised my eyebrows, asking, "Still alive?"

"Just about," Vertigo said. "Aren't you supposed to be dead?"

"Not today."

"So just how do you survive falling from a hundred foot cliff into Shark Central?"

"I can't tell you, I'm too modest. No, seriously, one of the X-Men saved my life."

"You're kidding. Which one?"

"Aqua."

"Who's that then?"

"Her real name is Marina. She's the girl I thought was dead. She's the one I joined the Brotherhood to avenge. She's not dead after all."

Gemini frowned, "I thought you said you saw her die."

"I did. Well, I saw her receive a fatal injury. I forgot that my sister can heal people."

"Does that mean you're leaving the Brotherhood?"

"No – well, I don't know really. I don't know what to think or what to do. I need time to sort it all out."

"So what does this mean for you and Cassie?" she asked. "If you still love this Marina girl, are you still going out with Cassie?"

"I don't know that either. That's one of the things I really need to sort out in my mind. I love both of them and I – no, I'd rather not talk about it."

"OK. But I think Cassie – "

She was interrupted by a groan from the bed beside me. I looked over to see Crusader stirring, her hands moving slightly, then her eyes snapping open. She focused on me and fear crossed her face. She said apprehensively, "Gary…

"It's all right, I'm not gonna hurt you. It'll take me a while to explain what's going on – so maybe you should just read my mind."

"OK…"

She closed her eyes and concentrated, then a few moments later they opened again. A smile of relief crossed my sister's face, "So you met Marina at last."

"I did. Listen, Crusader – "

"Call me Annie."

" – I wish – I just wish we'd never had to fight. I – I'm sorry. That's all I can say right now."

You mean until we're alone, her telepathic voice came into my mind. I nodded, then I said a little awkwardly, "Are you feeling all right?"

"I'm really hungry…"

We hadn't been feeding her, instead relying on her healing power to keep her alive.

"I'm sorry," I said again. "I'll get you something."

"No, I'll do it," said Gemini. "I feel like I owe her something. She was the one who saved Pyro's life."

"Thank you," said my sister.

"No. Thank you. You've done something that I'll never be able to repay you for. You don't know what it means to me."

"Actually I do."

"Telepaths are cheats," Vertigo yawned.

I turned to Crusader – to Annie – once more, "Cyclops wants to talk to everyone once you're all recovered. Can you walk? Are you strong enough?"

"Once I've had something to eat I will be."

After Gemini had left the room, Vertigo looked over at us, "So you two are brother and sister, huh?"

We nodded.

"And also mortal enemies," he added. "That's gotta suck."

My sister and I looked at each other, and I voiced our thoughts, "We're not so sure about the enemies bit any more."

At that, Vertigo's expression became serious. He raised an eyebrow and said, "They're still the enemy, Gladiator. The situation is a little bit weird just now, but it doesn't change anything. They're still the enemy. Don't ever forget that."

Testing his legs to see if they would support him, he stood and headed for the exit. For the first time since we had met in our duel of fate, Crusader and I found ourselves alone together. Her small, gentle hand found its way inside mine, and she smiled, "I'm glad we don't have to fight each other any more. I'm glad we're on the same side this time."

"Me too. Cyclops mentioned something about the Horsemen; he reckoned that Oculus - I mean Dad - has worked out what it is they're trying to do."

"The Horsemen…those would be the mutants who attacked the mansion not so long ago?"

"That's them. We were trying to do the same thing, to work out what it was they wanted, to decide whether they posed a threat to mutant life. We had no idea if they were going to be friends or enemies. We were worried they might even join up with the - with your people."

Annie shook her head, "No - they wouldn't do that."

"How do you know?"

"Because when they invaded the mansion I was able to read their minds - well, two of them. The other two - I don't know what it was, but - there was something not right. I couldn't sense their minds at all."

"Why not?"

"I told you, I don't know."

"Which two couldn't you sense?"

"I don't know their names - the one who looked like a skeleton, and the one with the chalk white skin who had a cloak covering his body."

"That sounds like Famine and Death. Maybe – maybe they can shield themselves from your telepathy," I suggested.

"No. If that was the case, I'd still be able to sense something. I'd know there was something blocking my psychic power. When I was a little girl Dad used to help me practice my telepathy, and he taught me how to shield my mind from him. I know what it feels like when somebody else is doing it."

"And they definitely weren't?"

"No. It was as if there was nothing there at all. It was really strange - it was as if they weren't even alive."

Her words triggered a memory somewhere in my subconscious, but I couldn't quite put my finger on it. I asked her, "So what did you sense in the two minds you were able to read?"

"I'm not sure. A lot of it was confusing. It was kind of…distorted. I'll try to explain. When I read a person's mind - let's say yours - I can sense information in different ways, depending on how deep I go. If I probe just inside the surface of your mind, all I get are vague images and emotions - basically whatever you're thinking about and feeling at that time. If I go in a little deeper, I can sense thought processes and start to put a sequence to the images. I can distinguish whether you're imagining or remembering something. I can start to work out why you're feeling the way you are."

"Right," I said. "I think I follow so far. You're saying that if I'm feeling angry or something, you can sense it on the surface, but you have to go a little deeper to find out the cause of it."

"Yes. Maybe it's something that happened, something that someone said, or something that might happen in the future. Anyway, if I go in deeper still, I can access more of your mind. I can sense everything in your short term memory. I can tell if you're hungry, hot or cold, if you're in pain, and what your plans are for the immediate future. I can sense anything that is worrying you. For example, I can tell just now that you're worried over your feelings for Marina and this Cassandra girl."

"Yeah…"

"Anyway, after that there is one more level I can reach, if I concentrate hard enough. Once I've reached it, I can access anything in your mind. Anything you've ever seen, heard, thought about, imagined, or planned. And, if I chose to do so, I could alter it. I could make you think, say or do anything I wanted."

She must have sensed the fear in my mind, and she smiled, "Relax. I'd never do it to you. I don't have the right to do it to anybody. I could have used it to convince you to leave the Brotherhood and come back to the mansion, but I didn't."

"Fair enough," I said, my fears calmed but not entirely quenched. "You were going to say something about the Horsemen?"

"Oh, yeah. OK, the whole point of that lecture on telepathy was to tell you one thing: information is stored and processed in our brain by tiny electrical impulses which - "

"I know that."

"Right. Part of my telepathic power is knowing how to decode those impulses to tell me what's in a person's mind. When I tried to read the minds of the Horsemen - or the two I could sense, at any rate - I could barely decode their electric signals at all. It was like - well, like nothing I'd ever experienced before. I learned enough to know that they aren't going to become our friends any time soon, but…I can't really explain it in words. It felt almost like - like I was trying to decode electronic signals from a machine, or something. That doesn't make any sense, but - "

"Actually it might," I said.

She raised her eyebrows, "What do you mean?"

"We - uh - we went to the laboratory where the Horsemen's creator works. He had a bunch of machines in the basement that allowed him to control the Horsemen. The four of them have got some kind of electronic implant devices in their brains. It allows Van Gaarde - that's the scientist who created them - to monitor all sorts of information about them, and to upload instructions into their minds."

"I see…"

"We think they were under his control when they went to the mansion."

"So you think I was sensing the signals from these electronic devices?"

"Could be. But the Horsemen have stopped responding to the implants. Effectively they've gone rogue, and Van Gaarde doesn't know why. That's why Pyro wanted us to find out their plans. If they're acting under their own volition for the first time, there's no way of predicting what they might do."

Annie looked thoughtful, "They stopped responding to their implant devices…I wonder if I had something to do with that."

"How?"

"My telepathic intrusion into their brains might have disrupted the signals they were getting from the implants. When I use my telepathy I'm projecting electrical impulses into the subject's brain, so there's a good chance it would have mixed up the devices."

"I guess it makes sense."

"And it means that if they are doing something threatening, it's partly my fault. I have a responsibility to stop them from hurting anybody. Gary, I - "

She was cut off as Gemini came back into the room.

"Where's Vertigo?" she asked.

I shrugged. Annie said, "He's with Pyro."

"OK. Here you go."

"Thanks."

Gemini was carrying some snacks and a can of juice, probably the first things she had come to in the fridge, and she placed them on the bed beside Annie. Then she hurried to the door to go and find Vertigo, or Pyro, or possibly both. Annie pushed her duvet aside and moved into a sitting position to make it easier to eat. She still moved a little painfully and she still looked pale and weak. I put a hand on her shoulder to steady her, and she gave me a smile.

"You don't look good. Can't you heal?" I said.

"I can, but it's not a substitute for eating. I haven't had any food for days and my body's getting weaker and weaker. When that happens my healing becomes less and less effective. Another few days and I wouldn't have survived."

"I'm sorry," I said. "For what it's worth, I was never happy about sealing you up in there. It was just - well, it was the only way we could make sure you wouldn't harm us. We want to protect mutants and the - and your people keep trying to get in our way."

Annie was too busy eating to talk, but her mind spoke into mine, Gary, nobody is trying to stop you protecting mutants. We just happen to think there are better ways of doing it than eradicating the entire human race.

"Annie, humans are never going to accept us."

Not while people like Pyro and Magneto are around and trying to kill them. That's why the X-Men exist, to show humans that some of us are prepared to share the world with them. To educate them about us.

"While all the time humans are hurting and killing baby mutants."

Our other duty is to raise mutant children and teach them how to use their powers responsibly, so they can protect themselves and those younger than them. Your way - Pyro's way - isn't going to solve anything. Even if you do kill every human on the planet, it doesn't mean the world's mutants can live in peace. We already have our differences. We already fight amongst ourselves. Different factions already exist. Things would only get worse. Wars would begin and thousands would be killed. It's inevitable. When humans first became the dominant species on Earth, the same thing happened to them. We'd be no different. Baby mutants would be no safer then than they are now.

"You can't know that for sure!"

Besides, you can't kill off the human race that easily. It's possible for two mutants to have a child that doesn't have any mutant powers, a child that is simply human. Would you kill your own child if you and Marina, or you and Cassandra had one without any powers?

"Of - of course I wouldn't. I'd love my child no matter what it was."

Before Crusader could respond, the door was pushed open and Gemini's head appeared in the doorway, "They want to talk to us now."

She disappeared once more and I stood, offering my hand to Annie, "Can you stand on your own? Do you need any help?"

"I feel stronger, but hold on to me just in case."

"Sure."

I helped her stand, and supported her as we walked out into the corridor.

"They're in the briefing room," she said.

We went that way, and found the rest of the X-Men and the Brotherhood waiting for us.

"Glad to see you two are brother and sister again," said Shock, smiling when she saw us entering the room together, Annie's hand in mine, my other hand around her shoulder, helping her balance.

Pyro didn't look quite so pleased but he didn't say anything, merely folding his arms and glancing at Cyclops, making his impatience clear. Vertigo and Gemini stood together, with little Acceleratus hiding behind them; the child was clearly still scared of the X-Men. Helios stood alone, his arms folded and his concentration obviously elsewhere. I knew it wasn't going to be easy for him to come to terms with what his brother had just done, or tried to do at any rate.

"All right," said Cyclops. "Now we're all here, I can begin. As I've already mentioned to some of you, Oculus has been using Cerebro to try and track the Horsemen and find out what it is they want. While he'll never be able to master the device in the way the Professor could, we think he has done enough to give us an idea of the Horsemen's plans."

"Where is Oculus?" Pyro asked suspiciously. "Why isn't he here to tell us himself?"

"He's back at the mansion, watching over the children. Now, we know – and I suspect you also know – that the Apocalypse mutants have been attacking army bunkers and stealing equipment. We've been trying to compile a list of what has been taken, in the hope that it will give us some idea what they intend to do."

"And?"

"We think they're building a weapon. A weapon so terrible and destructive that it could eradicate all life on the planet."