Editor's Note: This is a loooong story, broken up in to many chapters. It takes place after Corruption, in late winter.
Talons, Chapter 1
Professor Xavier did not often leave the institute grounds. Textbooks came to the Xavier Institute from every publishing house, all in the hopes of enticing him to buy more. Food was shipped in weekly. Contractors came to him. When he did leave, it was almost invariably for "professional" work, whether it was giving academic speeches, "enrolling" another student, or attending yet another board on the "mutant problem". Today, a blustery, cloudy Thursday in March, was a rarity. Today, he, Scott, and Ororo had taken the day to get some personal errands done in Westchester proper. It was one of the few chances Xavier had to add to his collection of rare books.
Scott pulled into the crowded parking lot of Kepler's Used Books and found an empty, blue-lined stall right next to the front door. The Professor's handicap license plates came in very handy in times like this. Kepler's, a privately-owned bookstore, shared the parking lot with a supermarket, and it seemed everyone must be shopping early for Easter. Scott popped the trunk and headed straight for the back to retrieve Xavier's wheelchair. As he went, he glanced at the supermarket across the lot, its entire front a wall of glass. He stopped and looked closer. Though it was a ways away, he could tell from this distance that there was something wrong. There were no people entering or exiting through either sets of doors. A man in dark clothes was pacing back and forth along the windows, gesturing violently with his arms.
Professor..., Scott thought, ill at ease.
I know, Xavier replied calmly, his voice in both Scott and Ororo's mind. The man is disturbed, and he has a weapon. He does not intend to kill people....
Ororo got out of the car and stood beside Scott. Xavier remained in the back seat, apparently reading one of his texts. His brown furrowed.
However, he cannot differentiate between reality and hallucination, Xavier continued. I am attempting to calm him.
Have the police been called? Ororo asked.
Yes. The man has not been there for long. Xavier's frown turned into an angry scowl. I don't like this. It's difficult to 'latch onto' this man's mind. He is clearly psychotic. He should not be able to evade me in this manner.
"I'll go take a look," Scott said aloud. "Ororo, stay by the Professor."
Do not fire on him unless I cannot stop him myself, Xavier ordered. These are suppressed memories fighting their way to the surface. I think we need to examine this man further, and in one piece.
Scott nodded as he strode toward the supermarket. As he got closer, he could hear the man inside shouting unintelligibly as he paced, waving the pistol around as if he'd forgotten it was in his hand. There were still people in the front of the store, but not many. Most must have hidden somewhere in the back to avoid this unstable individual, if not fled through the loading dock. The rest were too scared to run.
Suddenly the man stopped and pointed the gun at a terrified cashier, screaming, "Get it out of my head! Get it out! Get it out!"
Scott put his hand to his visor, ready to take this man down on the Professor's word. The man's gun hand trembled, then fell, the gun hitting the floor. Xavier must have finally found a way into his mind. Scott breathed a sigh of relief.
Before the last wisps of breath exited Scott's lips, a hole appeared in the wall of windows, and the deranged, disarmed gunman pitched forward, silenced at last. Cyclops felt Xavier's stunned, painful cry in his mind. He must have still been in contact with the gunman when he went down. Cyclops dove between some parked cars and looked around. Where had the shot had come from? A policeman wouldn't use a silenced rifle, would he?
Professor! Was that a police sniper? he mentally shouted.
Stay down, Cyclops! came Xavier's reply. Whoever it is, I can't sense him! He's shielded!
More holes appeared in the glass, even though it looked to Cyclops that the gunman had been taken down with the first bullet. So many holes appeared in one small section that the entire pane shattered into shining glass gravel. One of the clerks inside the market started screaming hysterically.
Storm heard something odd and out of place on the roof of Kepler's. It was a soft whine, as if from a car's turbo engine winding up. From her angle, so close to the building, there was no way she could see what was happening. Instead, she reached out invisible fingers, touching the soft breezes, feeling their shifts. There was a disturbance up there, something strong, like the downdraft from a jet. Something was lifting up. Their sniper?
"Cyclops!" she shouted. "Wide blast on the roof!"
Cyclops spun around and swept the roof with a wide blast, even though he couldn't see his target. He caught something in the middle of his pass. The crimson energy hit a figure near the edge of the roof, flowing around and outlining as if it was a submerged rock in the middle of a rushing river. The figure was covered with some sort of armor and had a long rifle in its grasp. That was all Cyclops could see of it before it fell to the roof again, out of his field of vision. Storm immediately took up where Cyclops left off, flying up to the roof. Thunder rumbled overhead somewhere in the heavy cloud cover.
The figure on the roof was slowly coming into view as it stood up. Its form seemed to flow about it like quicksilver, white and blue sparks springing off, as whatever mechanism camouflaged it shorted out. It had to be a man, wearing something that looked more at home on the silver screen than standing on the roof of a book store. The sniper was completely encased in strange, futuristic, powder blue armor, leaving no spot open. That turbo-whine was winding down, and what must have been a flight mechanism built into the back of his armor coughed, sputtered, and died. The sniper raised the rifle and shot at Storm, who just barely avoided the shot. For someone wearing such encompassing, bulky armor, he moved with frightening speed.
Cyclops ran into the supermarket as the rain started. Storm could handle this. She had to, because he had no line of sight on anyone in the middle of the bookstore roof. Perhaps the gunman inside the store was still alive. Perhaps his wounds weren't lethal. Cyclops shouldered his way through automatic doors that opened far too slowly for his tastes. The sales clerk was still screaming. Cyclops shook his head grimly. The man was dead, all right. The sniper must have wanted to make sure. The first shot through the chest looked like it would have done it, and yet there were three more shots through the head. No wonder the clerk was so horrified. Cyclops walked to the corpse, which was oozing blood, gray matter... and something else. He knelt down and looked at the base of what had been the man's skull. A glint of blue gel peeked out from under his short hair. The blue was present nowhere else, despite all too ample opportunities to leak out the man's exposed braincase.
The first shot to silence, the next ones to eliminate the evidence? Scott wondered.
The clouds darkened and disgorged sheets of rain and hail as Storm brought down her lightning. The sniper jerked spasmodically as electricity coursed around him. He fell to one knee, then sprang up and ran across the roof. He took four bounding steps, Storm following close behind, and was gone in a flash of white light. Storm pulled up suddenly. Another teleporter. There had been a mutant in that suit.
I've seen entirely too many teleporters lately, she thought. You'd think they were as common as grains of sand.
* * * * *
It had been raining off and on all day at the Institute. It was late March, that annoying time between winter and spring, without the fun of snow or joy of bright days. It was terminally overcast, dreary, cold, and wet. By the time late afternoon rolled around, it was pitch black outside, the rain was steady, and Bobby Drake was going completely stir crazy. He sat across the sofa, legs kicked up on the armrests, flipping through the channels with one lazy hand on the remote. Everything was just kind of boring right now.
"It never fails to amaze me how there can be so many channels, and still nothing on," Kurt's voice drifted from somewhere behind the couch.
Bobby sighed and sat up. "500 channels and nothing on," he agreed. "Maybe a DVD or something."
As Bobby took a step off of the couch, the lights flickered, then died. All the hums of electricity fell silent, the room eerily quiet except for the softly tapping rain. Bobby looked around in annoyance.
"Does this happen often?" Kurt asked.
Bobby knew the man was there, somewhere in the dark, but for some strange reason he couldn't find him among the grainy shadows.
"Twice last year," Bobby replied. "They were supposed to have updated that switching station by this month, but I guess the electric company had more cutbacks. The generator should kick in--"
The lights came on. Finally he saw Kurt, standing over by the video and DVD media shelf. How strange, that Bobby could see through Kurt when he was in shadow, as if he was truly invisible.
"Somebody likes Michael Crichton, I see," Kurt noted. "Andromeda Strain, Rising Sun, Jurassic Park and Lost World. Even Congo." He paused, then mumbled, "That must be solely to complete the collection."
"I read Jurassic Park last year," Bobby commented, walking up to stand next to Kurt. "Y'know, usually books don't translate all that good to movies, but they got that one really close."
"Yes, usually Hollywood just takes the book's title and makes it up as they go along," Kurt agreed. He quickly grabbed a DVD from a different shelf. "Aha! Case in point."
He held up the DVD. It was the original Frankenstein with Boris Karloff. Bobby took it and looked at the back. He'd never actually seen the movie all the way through, but, like everyone else, he knew several key scenes.
"What, didn't Dr. Frankenstein actually make a monster in the book?" he asked.
"Well, yes, but with nowhere near as much style," Kurt mumbled. "The man was a wiener."
Bobby burst out into incredulous laughter. Kurt had not used such distinctly American slang in front of him before, and it sounded so funny coming out of his mouth, especially the way he pronounced it with a soft V instead of a W.
"A what?" Bobby giggled. "A 'veenah'?"
Kurt leaned against the shelf and crossed his arms. "Have you ever read Ms. Shelly's original book?"
"No."
"Let me give you a quick summary." Kurt stood away from the shelf and took a couple steps toward the center of the room, giving his hands space in which to act out his words. "In the movie, the mad doctor animates his monster with lightning, screaming 'it's alive', yes? He laughs with demented glee and pride." Kurt dramatically lifted his fists to the heavens. "I am God! See what I have created!" He then looked back at Bobby. "In the book, he uses some sort of chemistry to do it. No storm, no dramatic lightning. And what does he do when his creation sits up? What does this man do, when his monstrous son stands up and takes a step towards 'papa'?"
At that point, Kurt put his hands up, palms out, and gave a high falsetto shriek, his eyes wide with spurious terror. Bobby almost doubled over laughing. Kurt put his hands to the sides of his face, eyes still wide, voice still artificially high.
"Oh, it's a monster! Oh, oh! It's ugly! I'm scared! Oh, get away from me, you nasty, ugly monster! Oh!" He dropped the act, his face fixed with disgust. "The man was a complete wiener."
"Are you serious?" Bobby asked, still laughing.
"Absolutely. Go read it for yourself. When I read that part, I threw the book across the room."
Bobby's grin faded as he heard a tense undercurrent in Kurt's voice. He quickly replayed Kurt's mocking words in his head. "Get away from me you ugly monster." Ouch. How many times had Kurt heard those words aimed at him? It sounded like this story hit a nerve.
"Gee, I guess you must really hate the Hunchback of Notre Dame," Bobby commented.
Kurt tensed, eyes flashing, and Bobby immediately regretted the slip of his tongue. Stupid, stupid, stupid! What on earth had possessed him to say that?
"Don't you have homework to do?" Kurt snapped.
He turned quickly and moved to the door, leaving Bobby standing there with his contrition and a DVD. When Kurt reached the doorway he stopped, a hand on the doorframe. Then he bowed his head, tension draining from his body.
"I'm sorry, Bobby," he apologized softly. "Please forgive me. I should not have snapped so."
"No, it's my fault," Bobby responded. "I mean, I should have known better. It was a stupid thing to say. I wasn't thinking."
Kurt sighed. He still faced away from Bobby. "I was eventually able to read through Frankenstein, but not the Hunchback of Notre Dame. I've tried. I have honestly tried. I just can't do it. I can't even sit through any of the film versions."
"Even the Disney one?" Bobby asked, a bit timid.
Kurt turned halfway around, looking at the floor. "Even the Disney one. I get to the point that Quasimodo is exposed...being tied down, ridiculed, humiliated...." He closed his eyes and shook his head. "That's it. I can't stand to watch any longer."
"But you know how it ends, right? Everything turns out O.K."
Kurt laughed once, a mirthless sound. "Disney has a love of happy endings. Originally, everyone burned to death in the church, so I've been told. That's not much incentive for me to finish the story, is it?"
Bobby put the Frankenstein DVD away and quickly scanned for something else. He pulled the object of his search and held it so that Kurt could see the title.
"How about Shrek instead?" he asked hopefully.
Kurt couldn't help but smile.
Before Bobby had the chance to follow through on his selection, Professor Xavier's voice called out in both their minds.
Everyone, I need to see all of you in the study, he requested. We may have a problem.
* * * * *
Kurt arrived first, appearing up in a corner of the room accompanied by the gentle, muffled bamf of exploding air. Ororo, Scott, and Xavier were already there. Kurt clung where he was, out of everyone's way, as he waited for the others to arrive.
"What's wrong?" he asked. "Did you run into trouble in town?"
"We got involved in trouble," Scott replied. "It wasn't aimed at us. We just got caught in the crossfire."
"The story of my life," Logan muttered as he walked briskly into the room. "Wrong place, wrong time, weird shit."
Peter jogged in, and Bobby and Rogue arrived a few seconds later, a little winded from their sprint to the study.
" 'Sup?" Bobby asked, finding a seat.
"I'm afraid we may have another conspiracy on our hands," Professor Xavier said, his expression somewhere between weariness and concern.
Kurt dropped to the floor and made his way to a seat, where he perched on the edge, tail flipping back and forth at the very tip. All gathered around the professor as he related the day's events, from their stopping at the bookstore to Storm's chasing off the sniper.
"I used one of the store's plastic bags to get a sample of that blue gel from the base of that man's head," Scott finished. "I also managed to get a fragment of some sort of hard material along with it. It was so small that I didn't realize I had it until we got back to the lab and started the analysis."
"Another Goddamn teleporter," Logan snarled. "With a sniper rifle and a hard suit. That's not just training, that's big bucks."
"Any idea what that blue stuff was?" Rogue asked.
"Considering the placement, I have my suspicions that it may be some sort of conductive neural gel," Xavier answered. "We'll know more when the analysis is complete. One thing I know for certain. That poor man's mental activity was so disrupted that he was having violent hallucinations, and in one of those hallucinations I found an image very similar in appearance to the suit Ororo saw on the rooftop."
"Another escapee from some testing lab?" Logan asked coldly. "They killed him to keep him from talking or being examined?"
"It's starting to look like that. However, we have no proof that this is a government operation."
Logan stood up, gesturing violently. His claws shot out. "Come off it, Charley! You know what it takes to do the R and D on something like a battlesuit? Much less to put it into production? Who else would have the resources?"
Kurt absently touched the back of his neck. That ugly sore left by Stryker's tender care had gone down to something more like a bad insect bite, but it was still there.
"I'd like to think that President McKenna would be watching for operations of that sort, now that Stryker's program has been revealed," Xavier replied evenly.
"Maybe we're seeing another version of the Brotherhood come up," Rogue said. "I've seen what Magneto can do. He could make a suit like that."
"Yes, but why?" Scott asked in reply. "What would be the point? Weapons are for humans, not 'us'. He disdains guns. He'd never arm one of his own with one."
"And if he could teleport and turn invisible, why not just go in, grab the man from the store, and teleport out?" Bobby asked. "Why kill him?"
"Perhaps he can only carry himself," Kurt reasoned. "We know nothing, except that he teleported once off of the roof. Perhaps it is such a strain that he can only do it once or twice a day."
"Perhaps the flake with the pistol was useless and it was easier to just kill him," Logan snapped at Kurt, his tone sharp. "Jesus, Kurt, you should know how these bastards work!"
Logan gestured angrily Kurt's way. Despite himself, Kurt flinched, his tail clutching the leg of his chair. Logan must not have realized his claws were out. Upon seeing Kurt's reaction, he hastily sheathed them.
"We don't have enough information one way or the other," Ororo said. "It's a sure bet it's an organization, but we don't know what kind. Could be a black op, could be Brotherhood, could be a third party."
"For now, we wait for the lab results," Xavier added. "But I want everyone to be a bit more alert in the coming days. Yes, we've put in sensors around the estate, but we can't afford to let them be vigilant for us."
* * * * *
He was there, again. The white walls. The men in black suits with little white plugs sticking out of their ears. They move in slow motion compared to Kurt. The dark puppeteer pulls his strings, setting Kurt flying into the agent's chest, snapping ribs like twigs, smashing the door behind him into splinters.
God, please, stop it. Someone stop this. Can't one of you shoot me?
One agent raises a gun and fires, but to Kurt's anguish his body is too fast. The bullets miss as he teleports. His nails are sharpened talons, his tail has a venomous stinger. He is destroying the men in the Oval Office, and each face burns into his memory as if from a white-hot brand. Finally he leaps on the President, who is terrified beyond reason. He has a right to be. The dark puppeteer is intoxicated with power, aroused by the destruction, while Kurt is held prisoner inside. But at the last instant, as Kurt draws the knife, he turns around at another presence in the room. A man, with a collar around his neck, is staring horrified. Kurt picks up the President and shoves him his direction.
I've done my part, apprentice, his mouth snarls to the frightened man. You do yours.
Kurt woke suddenly, bolt upright in bed and gasping for breath. His covers lay mostly on the floor, torn off by the subconscious lashing of his tail. He frantically reached out for the lamp on his end table, almost knocking it over in his haste to turn it on. When the bulb lit up, he leaned against the wall, eyes closed with relief. It wasn't that he needed the light to see by, but he had to be sure he was no longer dreaming. Too many times he thought he had awoken in his room, only to have the whole thing start again. A lamp was his one infallible trigger. Still dreaming, it wouldn't turn on. Awake, he would have light.
He glanced at the clock: 2am-ish. He brought his knees up to his chest, resting arms on knees, head on arms, trying to come back to an infinitely preferable reality. Trembling. He was in the mansion, not the White House, nor the Oval Office. He had no dagger in his room, let alone his sinister hand. Stryker was dead and gone, along with the entire Alkalai Lake base and staff. There was no one left to force the darkness up to the surface, to shove him back into his mind as a horrified rider. It wouldn't happen again. It couldn't happen again.
Except, today, it had. It happened to one lost soul in a supermarket, with some sort of artificial tap at the base of his skull. Kurt rubbed the back of his neck with one hand. The welt would never fade completely. It was as permanent as any of his scars, even if it was given against his will. Its placement was like the attachment point of a leash. Now someone else had been forced to wear that dreadful leash. It was starting all over again.
He slowly uncurled. Just as slowly, even tentatively, he stepped off his bed, his initial touch to the floor as hesitant as one testing ice for firmness. Clad only in sweatpants, he moved to the window and opened it. It had stopped raining some time ago, but under night's chill none of the water had evaporated. From his view on the top floor, everything glistened in the light of the quarter moon, the sky half-filled with clouds. The sudden, damp cold hit with unexpected force; he hunched over with a shiver and sharp intake of breath. It was good, though. It reminded him he was awake and alive.
The nightmares had eased after they returned from West Virginia. Kurt found a measure of control over them. During one last week, he was even able to break away from the White House tour group before anything started. Now they were worse than ever, with one addition; a stranger Kurt only learned about a few hours ago. Stryker's hand reached far beyond the grave.
Kurt picked a pen and small notepad from his desk. The idea of going back to sleep didn't appeal to him in the least. He needed the cold air. He needed to do something. He clutched pen and pad in his tail as he crawled out of the open window and up the cold, damp side of the mansion. At any other time, this would bring to mind romantic images of a charming rogue, scaling the castle walls for some forbidden assignation. Not now.
He made it to the highest point of the mansion and stood atop the tower. From there, he could see past the grounds' wide expanse to the sparsely-traveled road beyond. He was uncomfortably chilled, but for all his complaints about cold to his comrades, he couldn't bring himself to go back for a shirt, let alone jacket. He perched like a gargoyle atop one of the crenellations and rested the pad of paper on his thighs. Hunched over in that position, with only the light of the stars and waning moon, he began to draw.
I was never meant to succeed in my 'mission', Kurt thought as he started with a small circle. If Stryker wanted the President dead, he surely would have had me go a different way. I could have teleported to the window of the Oval Office, then in and out, in under two seconds, with no one the wiser. No, he wanted the spectacle. He wanted pictures from every angle. He wanted wounded, heroic agents, he wanted scared, detained tour groups. It was a suicide mission, to discredit all mutants and let him crow 'I told you so'. The pen slowly spread its reach, fine lines branching out from the initial circle. I was to be shot, mounted, and stuffed like a trophy. I wasn't supposed to get that close. I was *too* good.
He wasn't sure which symbol to chose for this scar. The important thing was not to hide the welt but build upon it. He could never cover up what Stryker had done. He couldn't blithely tell himself that it wasn't his fault and walk away, whistling in his graveyard. It did happen. It was part of him, now. If he was to somehow atone for this, it couldn't be by denial. It had to be by inclusion.
Far off, somewhere down the road, he heard the faint sounds of traffic. Kurt glanced up to see three tractor-trailer rigs, lit by headlights and running lights, slowly moving down the road in a late night convoy. He went back to his work. Rigs were common enough this time of night, traveling at a time to avoid traffic or disturbance. Several seconds later, though, he still picked up the faint rumble of their engines. They should have moved on beyond his range of hearing by then. He looked up. Had they stopped for some reason? Perhaps they were switching relief drivers?
The three rigs had pulled over to the side of the road, a good quarter-mile away from the mansion itself. Kurt's excellent night vision could make out the decals on the side of the trailers: Bestway Shipping. No one had exited yet, and from Kurt's angle he couldn't see inside the cabs. He was about to go back to his drawing when the lights on the side of the lead rig's trailer began to move upwards. Kurt set down his pad and slowly stood up. Before his eyes, the entire long side of the trailer rolled up like a garage door, revealing row after row of large tubes.
Kurt swore loudly in German. That was a missile rack, and it was aimed right at the institute.
To be continued….