Chapter Eight
As the jet settled into a gentle easy landing, Crusader lifted her hands from the controls and I looked at her, "I didn't know you could fly one of these things."
"Shapeshifter taught me. I'm a fast learner."
"Obviously. So where are we, exactly?"
"We're at the hospital where I left the cure sample. I'm not expecting it to still be here, but hopefully we can find some clue as to where it is now."
"Lead the way."
Annie shook her head, "Gary, I want you to stay here. The jet's cloaking field should keep it safe from detection but just in case, I want you here to keep an eye on things. I won't be long."
"OK. Take care."
My sister smiled. She hit the control for the embarkation ramp, and waited until it had fully descended.
"Telepath to me if you need help," I said.
"I shouldn't come across anything I can't handle, but I will feel better knowing you're backing me up. Gary, I – " she hesitated, then her smile reappeared. " – I'm just happy that we're on the same side at last. This is the way it should be."
"Yeah. I hope it lasts."
"Me too. See you soon."
She hurried down the ramp and I watched from the view-port as she made her way to the hospital building a hundred yards or so away. As I watched, I knew I was looking at the most powerful mutant in the world – but whether it was Annie, or my own reflection in the view-port, I couldn't tell. I'd conquered her in our only battle to date, but now it seemed she had been holding back from using the true extent of her mind powers. Why? I couldn't understand it. I had always believed in using my powers to their full potential whenever I needed them. Annie on the other hand had always been the one who held back from using her real strength. Whether it was through some sense of moral duty, or due to a lack of confidence in herself, I didn't know. What if Crusader had unleashed her full telepathic might and tried to control my mind from her own? Would the outcome have been different?
I sat back in the co-pilot's seat and tried to calm the maelstrom of thoughts swirling around in my mind. I had to concentrate on what was important: finding the cure, then stopping the Horsemen from completing their weapon of world devastation. Once that was done, things would have calmed down sufficiently for me to make some decisions. My entire future would depend on what those decisions turned out to be. To stay with the Brotherhood or come back to my family. To fight for the humans or the mutants. To love Cassandra or Marina. The answer to all of those questions was simple: in each case I wanted to do both. But unfortunately it didn't look as if 'both' was an acceptable answer to any of them. In each case it seemed I had to choose one or the other. And whichever choices I made, I was guaranteed to make people I cared about very unhappy indeed.
How long I was lost in my thoughts, I had no idea, but the next thing I knew Crusader had returned.
"Did you find it?" I asked.
She sat down in the pilot's seat and shook her head, "No, it's long gone from here. I was right in my suspicions though: it has been taken by a government research team. I'm not sure exactly what their intentions are, but it doesn't look as if they're going to start distributing it amongst the general populace any time soon."
"So where is it? We have to go and get it. Where are they holding it?"
"I have no idea. The doctor I spoke to couldn't tell me anything other than the name of the head researcher. Our next step is obviously to find this researcher, but I don't know where to start looking. I could try to use Cerebro, but I haven't got enough experience to control the device properly. Dad could do it, but not until he's recovered."
I frowned, "We have to do something, Annie."
"I know. Any ideas? The researcher's name is Van Gaarde. Does it mean anything to you?"
My eyes widened, and Crusader obviously sensed my thoughts. She looked over, "You know him?"
"We've met," I said sarcastically. "But we're not exactly on speaking terms."
"You know where we can find him?"
"Yeah. He's got a research lab in New York. That's where we – uh – where we tracked the Horsemen from."
I forced any thoughts of Mystique out of my mind before Crusader could read them. I didn't know why, but I felt I should keep Mystique a secret for now. If she didn't want Pyro to know she was still alive, it was a reasonable assumption she didn't want the X-Men to know either. It seemed Annie was unaware of my hidden thoughts; she was too busy controlling the jet. We took off and headed for Van Gaarde's lab.
As I stood outside the tall glass-fronted building once more, it was in stark contrast to the last time I had been here. So much had happened in the space of a day, even though it was now after midnight and we were technically into a second day. I began heading for the front entrance, but Annie put her hand on my arm, "Wait."
"What?"
"I'm not sure. I can sense something – something odd. There's a military security force inside the building. They must be protecting the vaccine."
"Or maybe they've upped security after my little intrusion last time I was here."
Annie's brow creased in confusion, "That's not all. There's something strange in there as well."
"What?"
"I don't know. I can't tell. Something terrible. I can't really pin it down. I could just be imagining it, but…I dunno…"
"Come on, we can't waste any time. We have to get inside and find the cure. Let's go."
"But – "
"If there's anything dangerous in there, I think we can stand up to it together. Come on!"
"Wait a minute!"
She held my arm, scanning the building with her eyes. At first I wondered why – there was nothing to see – then I remembered Annie's X-ray vision. She had to be looking through the walls, seeing what was inside.
"OK, there are military personnel on the bottom three floors. We don't want to go in that way."
"Why not? They can't hurt us. Together we could annihilate them within seconds!"
"Yes. But we're not going to. There's an easier way."
I looked at her dubiously, "What is it?"
"Take my hand."
"Why?"
"Gary, just do it."
Feeling a little foolish, I held my sister's hand then sighed impatiently, "All right, now what – whoa…!"
Annie had her other hand raised slightly, using her telekinesis to levitate the two of us into the air. I looked down and swallowed a little nervously as I saw the ground moving further and further away below me. She lifted us higher and higher, and I began to grow more and more unhappy. It wasn't that I was afraid of heights – I just didn't particularly like being suspended over one with only my sister's enigmatic mental powers to keep me there. At any moment she could drop me to my death, or lose concentration and drop both of us. I didn't like this. I didn't like having my life resting entirely in another person's hands. It wasn't that I didn't trust Annie; I just liked to be wholly in command of my own situation. Nor did I like relying on something I knew so little about and couldn't understand, in this case her telekinetic force. It was with some relief that I found myself finally being lifted over the top of the building, and gently deposited on the roof. I held on to Annie's hand tightly for a second or two, letting my fears and my heartbeat calm down, then I let go and tried to appear unperturbed, "So what now?"
"We have to find this researcher Van Gaarde. Where will he be keeping the vaccine?"
"His office is on the tenth floor. We can probably find some clues there."
"Let's go."
We found a staircase that led down inside the building, and once there we headed for the lifts. It was certainly different, and quite a relief, to be able to rely on Annie's mind powers to let us know when we were about to run into somebody. Stealth was so much easier when one was telepathic. With a grudging respect, I had to admit that Annie's idea had been best. If I had followed my own plan, I'd still be fighting the soldiers down on the bottom levels, no doubt sounding the alarm to warn Van Gaarde.
We had just stepped into the elevator when Annie's head jerked up, "I can feel it again."
"Feel what again?"
"That – thing. That strange entity, whatever it is. It's human, at least I think it is. Could be a mutant. It's in terrible pain."
"Maybe Van Gaarde has a new research specimen."
"What do you mean?"
"Gemini. Van Gaarde used her as a lab rat for two whole years when she was a little girl."
"That's awful," said Annie, shocked.
"Of course it is," I said, then added with sarcasm. "Some humans aren't very nice to mutants."
"We've never tried to deny that. Now be quiet, we're there."
The lift doors opened and we stepped out on to the tenth floor.
"His office is down this way," I said, pointing to the left.
But Annie wasn't listening. She had spotted something in the corner and was walking over to investigate. I followed her. My eyes widened in surprise when I saw what my sister was kneeling beside. A body, clearly human, lay sprawled in the shadows, blood encrusted around a wound in its neck, its face frozen in an endless scream of terror.
"What happened?" I asked.
Annie shook her head, "I have no idea. He must have died suddenly – and clearly very horribly. Something terrible happened here, but I can't – "
"Let's just find Van Gaarde," I interrupted. "We can come back and worry about this once we have the vaccine."
"Gary, how can you be so uncaring? This person's dead. Don't you feel anything for him?"
"He's only human. Come on."
Still lost in thought, Annie allowed herself to be pulled to her feet, and I led her down the corridor that would take us to Van Gaarde's office. Halfway down, we found another body. This one was a woman, curled in a foetal position against the wall, a huge gash in her throat, lying in a pool of her own blood.
"This blood's warm," Annie hissed. "Whatever did this – it must still be here."
"The Horsemen?"
"No. They'd never have been able to sneak in past the guards downstairs. It must be something else. Something – or someone – else must have found a way inside the building."
I wasn't so sure. This certainly looked like the work of the Horsemen. Pestilence, with his long raking claws, could have inflicted these wounds easily. But why would the Horsemen come here? Were they trying to find out about themselves, why and how they had been created? Were they seeking revenge against Van Gaarde for what he might have done to them? Annie was right in saying that the Apocalypse mutants couldn't have got in here without alerting the soldiers down below…unless it wasn't all of them. Perhaps they had sent Pestilence out alone. He could climb walls. Some adhesive substance secreted by the palms of his hands and the soles of his feet enabled him to grip any surface with ease. He could have climbed to the top of the building and got in via the roof, much the same way Crusader and I had done. Could there be another explanation? Mystique, perhaps? No, that wouldn't make any sense. She wouldn't go around murdering these humans for no good reason. I didn't know her terribly well, but I knew that much.
"There's got to be an explanation for this," Annie said. "I'll go to Van Gaarde's office and see what I can find. Gary, there must be some way we can access the building's security system: alarms and cameras and suchlike. Try to find it, and try to find out what happened here."
"Can't you sense who did this?"
"I can sense something, but it's very erratic. It's this strange being I've been sensing every since we got here. I'm assuming he or she is responsible for this, but there's something not right about their mental signature. It's all mixed up and it's impossible for me to pin down."
"So it could be one of the Horsemen. You said you had trouble reading their minds."
"True…anyway, see what you can find out. Meet me in his office."
It took me a few minutes to find a security station. There was nobody inside, but my eyes lit instantly on the banks of monitors showing live feed from security cameras around the building. I walked over to take a closer look. The images were not of particularly good quality, but I didn't have too much trouble working out what they showed. Each screen was labelled with its camera's location, and I began to get a pattern of what was going on. On the upper floors there were more dead bodies, cut open and covered in blood. On the bottom three floors the soldiers were still on guard, and they appeared to be calm and unthreatened. One camera showed a moving figure, but it was Annie, working on bypassing the electronic lock on Van Gaarde's office door. As I watched she met with success, pushing the door open and stepping inside.
I found one screen that showed footage from the outside of the building, and turned my attention to it. If, as I suspected, Pestilence had got into the building by climbing the outside wall, this camera might have captured him on film. If I could only find some way to view the images it had recorded from earlier. Experimenting with the controls for a minute or two, I found a rewind-replay capability and began looking through the previous footage of the exterior camera. I saw Annie and I making our somewhat unconventional entrance, then nearly an hour further back I found something else. Setting the monitor to play at normal speed, I leaned forward to watch intently.
In the shadows near the corner of the facility, a shape appeared. Looking in all directions, presumably checking the coast was clear, it then hurried towards the building and planted both hands on the wall. As I watched, the figure reached up for two more handholds, then began to climb. Moving slowly but steadily, the dark shape that could only be the insectoid Pestilence ascended higher and higher, clearly aiming for the roof. I turned away. I knew what I needed to know. It was time to find Annie and see about locating the cure.
Another dead human lay sprawled outside Van Gaarde's office. Trying to remain unaffected, I stepped over the dead body and pushed open the door which Crusader had left ajar. The scene inside the office was just as macabre as the corridor outside. Two blood-spattered figures lay on the floor, and Annie was checking them over to see if either might still be alive. The first was barely recognisable as human, such was the level of hacking and gruesome dismembering that had gone on. Blood, bones and body parts were scattered about in a horrific spectacle of brutality.
"I think this was Van Gaarde," I said, swallowing hard to keep the bile from rising in my throat. "Annie, listen. I found a security room and I watched some of the cameras. I was right. Pestilence of the Horsemen is the one who did this. He must still be here."
She frowned, "But what's he come for? What does he want?"
"Revenge, maybe. I'm more concerned about where the other three might be. What if – ?"
I was interrupted as Annie gasped in surprise, "This one's still alive!"
I knelt by her side in front of the second figure. It was a woman, also bloodied and butchered from various wounds, but she was still clinging on to life, if only by the narrowest of threads. Her chest rose and fell, just barely, and Annie immediately did what she could, placing her hands on the woman's heart and closing her eyes as she called on her healing power. I was doubtful if it would even work, given the woman's injuries, but eventually her wounds began to close, her breathing grew stronger, and a relieved smile crossed Annie's face as she realised the woman was going to survive. I smiled too, happy because Annie was, never thinking I would have been so pleased to see a human survive. Annie had obviously been reading my mind, and she said, "Gary, she isn't human."
"What?"
The woman gasped as she regained consciousness, and her eyes jerked open. She blinked dizzily, still faint and weak from the blood she had lost. For a moment her eyes flashed yellow, then returned to their ordinary colour.
"Mystique!" I exclaimed.
She looked at me, "Gladiator? I thought I was – how did you heal me?"
"My sister did. Look, I don't have time to explain. What happened here? Who did this?"
Before Mystique could reply, all three of us heard a sound from outside the room. I looked up apprehensively, expecting the hissing, spitting insectoid to come charging through the doorway at any moment. I stood, my fists clenched, ready to protect my sister at all costs. Five seconds passed, then ten, and nothing had happened. I looked at the two women, "You both heard that too, didn't you?"
They nodded. Confusion lined Annie's face, "He's close – Pestilence – he's here somewhere, but I can't pin him down."
"I'll check outside the office," I said. "Annie, see if she knows where the vaccine is."
I opened the door and glanced into the corridor outside. There was nothing, only the two dead humans who had been there before. I knew I hadn't imagined the sound – Annie had heard it as well – but there was nothing here now. I took a step outside, closing the door behind me, and listened hard for anything that might indicate an imminent threat. There was nothing. I advanced a little further up the corridor, my muscles tensing instinctively, ready for battle. If Pestilence was here alone, this was an ideal opportunity to finish off one of the Horsemen. It would make stopping them a whole lot easier if…
Movement registered in the corner of my eye as a dark shape flashed out of the office door I was passing. Something slashed at my throat, and I reacted as fast as I could to duck out of the way. I tried to rally, swinging a punch at the figure and seeing him sweep effortlessly to the side, reacting by stabbing towards my throat again. I kicked him aside, and took up a defensive position, expecting a mouthful of acid to be aimed at my face any second. I had to keep Pestilence at a distance; I couldn't afford to get too close to those claws.
I realised my mistake a second too late. In a split second it occurred to me that I had fatally overlooked one rogue factor in this increasingly complex equation. I had automatically assumed that I was fighting Pestilence. After all, who else could climb walls and slice open people's throats virtually at will? I had forgotten somebody. Maybe I just wasn't used to the idea of that person being an enemy. As he stepped into the light I could see the haunting intensity and murderous intent once more in his normally emotionless grey eyes. In the enclosed space of the corridor I didn't have a hope of avoiding his next attack. Recyclo's blade moved almost fluidly across the yard or so between us, piercing my throat, blood exploding outwards in all directions.
A/N: if you want to see this updated, leave a review. There's no point in my uploading if nobody is interested.
