Title: The Genesis Strain
Author: furygrrl
Archive: Just ask first
Rating: R - for language, violence, and gore
Disclaimer: Not mine
Yrch Monger - Thanks for the review - and the stars. I've never received 12 at once before!
Chapter Three: When Nightmares Walk
New York City, NY
June 27th 6:01 a.m.
Jean woke from a fitful sleep with a start - heart hammering against her ribcage, eyes wide, her entire body surging with terror-induced adrenaline.
Something's wrong...something's wrong...something's wrong...
The words echoed repeatedly through her head, forcing her from her bed and to her feet, her legs wobbling unsteadily as she tried to move faster than her still sluggish system would permit. She staggered to the window and clung to it, her gritty eyes searching the outside world for the source of her fear.
The sky without was clear and tinged with the pinkish blush of the rising sun, the storm clouds of yesterday having followed the night's path and departed, the only sign of their passing in the large puddles that dotted the road below. Birds were chorusing from the trees that lined the street, heralding the new day and a pre-dawn jogger with equal gaiety.
It was a morning just like any other.
Jean sagged into the windowsill with weary relief, a long breath exhaling from her lungs.
I must have been having a nightmare... she thought to herself, running a trembling hand through her mass of disheveled hair in an attempt to smooth it from her face. But if it was only that, only a bad dream, why am I still feeling so...
She never finished that thought.
A cry from the kitchen below echoed up the stairs, making her jump and sending her pulse tripping wildly again.
Mom and Dad!
The words blazed through her mind like fire, and she ran, her chest tight with panic as she flew down to the first floor and into the kitchen, only to find her hurried entrance the source of her parent's vaguely amused stares.
"What's going on? What happened?" Jean demanded, taken aback by the sight of her mother standing in front of the stove, apron around her waist, spatula in her hand. "I thought I heard a scream," she added, looking to her father who was calmly sipping from a mug, his paisley printed pajamas peeking out from beneath his robe.
"Oh, I'm sorry darling, I didn't mean to wake you. I just splashed some hot oil on my hand," Elaine apologized, flipping a pancake. She turned to give her husband an affectionate smile, her words still directed at Jean. "Your father thought it might be nice for Sara to come home to her favourite breakfast after such a grueling night."
"She's not home yet?" Jean asked as she took the chair opposite her father.
"Not yet, Princess," John sighed, the mug of coffee rising to meet his lips.
Jean, still watching him, saw his gaze leave her face and focus on something beyond the sliding glass doors behind her, the mug poised in front of his mouth untouched, his eyes narrowing as he squinted.
"What on earth..." she heard him say before the mug fell from his grip, smashing against the tiled floor, his eyes gone wide. "My God! Sara!"
Jean leapt up from her seat and turned towards the view of the backyard, a cry of shock wrenched from her throat when she finally saw what had so upset her father.
Sara, still dressed in green doctor's scrubs that were now torn and bloody, was banging feebly against the thick glass doors with dirty, scrabbling hands. Her face, obscured by shoulder-length brown hair that looked stringy and damp, was hidden from the family members inside, though the pained moans emanating from her could be heard by all.
After a moment of stunned disbelief, Elaine and John both rushed to the doors, the former crying out at the sight her daughter presented, while Jean remained rooted to the spot, her initial concern for her sibling fading beneath the resurgence of that earlier sense of terrible wrongness. "Something's not...right," whispered through lips gone instantly numb, her words too quiet for anyone to hear.
The patio doors were pulled open and Sara was brought into the kitchen, a parent holding fast to each of her arms as they helped her inside.
"What happened?" asked one.
"Are you alright?" asked the other.
"Something's not right," Jean repeated inaudibly as she began backing away, the fluid in her veins gone to ice water without reason, stealing her voice, preventing her from going to help her sister.
In days to come, when she was able to review the details of the events that followed with a clearer mind, Jean would come to understand and appreciate that instinctive prickle of wariness more fully. As it was, at that moment, it was the only thing that saved her life. Even with her mutant abilities, even with that stabbing sense of foreboding, even with skills honed by Logan and more Danger Room sessions than she cared to count, Jean was unprepared not only for the speed of her sister's assault, but also for its horrifying results.
Sara had barely set foot into the kitchen when she suddenly thrust her father away from her, the violent move sending the older man reeling against the counter and stumbling to the floor. She ripped her other hand free of her mother's grip, and, as Jean watched, paralyzed, curled her fingers into rigid talons that were raked across Elaine's face.
Jean's mother screamed.
Her father, climbing awkwardly to his feet, screamed.
The sound coming from Sara's gaping mouth might have been a scream, but it was too soon drowned out by the liquid, tearing noise of rending flesh as Sara's teeth sunk into her mother's throat. Blood spurted like a fountain when Sara pulled back, glistening gobbets of flesh dangling from her reddened mouth like hunks of newly ground hamburger meat. She chewed them, the flaps of flesh oozing a steady stream of purplish fluid that streaked over her chin and soaked into her shirt, and then, swallowing, she dipped her head back towards the grievous wound for more.
"Lainey! Lainey!" John was up and moving, running towards the thing that was his daughter like a tackling football star. "Get away from her!" he shouted at Sara, one arm taking hold of her hair, the other coming to wrap around her neck, yanking her so forcefully away from Elaine that he overbalanced, sending both father and daughter to the slick tiled floor in a heap.
Jean watched things unfold with the hazy detachment of a waking dreamer, too sluggish to move, too cold for emotion, too deep in shock to grasp what she was witnessing. She stared uncomprehending at her swaying mother, now gasping like a landed fish as foamy pink froth bubbled at the corners of her mouth. She saw the ruined flesh of the woman's throat, saw her life's blood begin to slow to a trickle as it finished pumping free of the torn jugular, saw her eyes, already glazing over with death, roll back in her head as she fell. It was that slow crumpling of her mother's slender frame that jarred Jean back to some semblance of awareness.
Only vaguely cognizant of her father grappling with the wild creature that wore her sister's face, Jean took mincing steps towards her mother, bare feet slipping in the pools of sticky wetness that had already begun to cool. She knelt, blood soaking into her nightgown, and reached out to touch her mother's pale face.
"M-mom?" she whispered, hearing her voice as if it were coming from a great distance away. "Mommy?"
When there was no response, Jean's throat constricted tightly, and a burning wetness pressed from behind her eyes, blurring her vision and making her blink rapidly.
A cry of pain bellowed from behind her and Jean glanced up, the two people thrashing a few feet away from her finally swimming into focus.
"D-daddy?" Jean's quivering lips formed the word, but no sound issued forth.
Sara had overcome her much larger, stronger father, and was now sitting on top of him, straddling him grotesquely as she used her teeth with deadly efficiency to strip away layers of neck and facial skin. His heels drummed a rapid tattoo against the gore-covered floor as he continued to scream, his arms waving ineffectively to either side of his body as his first born fed.
A white-hot rage streaked through Jean's system at the sight, sharpening her mind and, for the moment, burying her fear. Her forgotten powers surged under skin like a fever, and all at once she was on her feet, bristling with crackling energy.
"Get away from him, Sara," she ordered in a choked voice.
Sara didn't move.
Their father was growing quiet, his legs and arms reduced to twitching feebly.
"I said get away from him!" Jean screamed, reaching out with her telekinesis blindly.
The Sara creature was ripped from John's body and thrown head-first into a china cabinet on the other side of the room. Heirloom plates and expensive crystal slid from their shelves, exploding discordantly when they met the floor, a stunned Sara dropping amid the shards of broken glass when Jean's hold faltered.
Sliding through the rusty puddles now covering the most of the floor, Jean scrambled to her father's side, the tears that threatened only moments before now spilling down her cheeks and onto his mauled face when she saw the same mask of death her mother wore creeping over his features.
"Oh God...Daddy," Jean sobbed, desperately checking for a pulse she knew was fading.
Her father's eyes fluttered weakly at her voice, and one of his hands rose to touch hers as it felt at his neck. "Run," gurgled thickly from his lip-less mouth, his muscles beginning to spasm. He coughed, spraying Jean's chest with dark blood before his hand fell away...and then he moved no more.
"No - NO!" Jean cried, taking handfuls of her father's robe and shaking him, wild with disbelief.
A moan floated through the stillness, raising the hairs on Jean's arms and immediately stifling her grief. Fearing that Sara had revived, she slowly rose into a crouch and peered over at the slumped figure of her sister, bile, hot and swift, filling her throat when the devastating results of her telekinetic attack were revealed.
Sara was now a broken thing; contorted and lying face up, her open, unseeing eyes stared like milky marbles at the ceiling she'd just painted the weekend before. Fluids leaked from her crushed skull, spreading like tiny rivers through the vast lake of duller blood, bits of bone and brain gleaming starkly white against the red.
The moan came again, louder this time and from the other side of the kitchen, drawing Jean's horrified gaze away from her sister. "Mom!" she breathed, a frantic hope clutching at her vitals.
On hands and knees, she clambered through congealing blood and rounded the counter that hid her mother's body from view, just as Elaine finished climbing unsteadily to her feet. A dizzying rush of incredulous relief flared at the sight of what surely had to be a miracle, only to fizzle painfully when Jean was able to see her mother's face clearly.
Eyes bleached the same unnaturally pale shade as Sara's were staring out the open patio doors vacantly, and her mouth, hanging slackly, was dripping reddish streamers of saliva that dribbled down her chin. That the flesh of her throat still hung in tatters, framing a gory hole so deep that Jean could see a silvery speck of spinal column winking at her from within, was only secondary to the inhuman visage that Elaine Grey now wore.
Jean knew that what stood before her wasn't her mother - at least, not anymore.
Another moan, this one deeper pitched, whined from the direction Jean had just come from, and with muddled understanding she knew that whatever had possessed her sister - and now claimed her mother, had found a home inside the shell of her father too.
But there was no time to mourn or ponder such horrifying knowledge.
Elaine's dead gaze, drawn by her husband's groan, suddenly shot to Jean's crouching form, a light of intent interest washing away the vacant blankness of only seconds before. With a hungry howl and surprising speed, the creature lunged for the redhead, only to crash harmlessly into a hastily erected telekinetic bubble.
Bracing herself against the sturdy counter, Jean climbed to her feet, her haunted face dripping with tears as she watched her newly woken father shuffle towards her. When his equally alien countenance joined the slavering face of her mother still trying to force her way through the mind-induced shield, Jean could feel something within her come tenuously close to snapping, a brittleness that if she but yielded to it, would fully break and allow her to surrender.
Sara, Mom, Dad...they're all gone...I'm all alone now...
The bizarre urge to laugh roiled sickeningly in her stomach as she continued to stare at the things that had once been her parents.
"But...I suppose I don't have to be," she whispered sadly to the creatures, placing her fingertips against the inside of her barrier, matching up to those of her father's.
It would be easy enough to let the shield fall...to reach out and hug her mom, hug her dad, one last time before they -
The shrill music of a cell phone blared from upstairs.
"Kitty," Jean murmured, an image of her friend - of all her friends in Bayville - suddenly flooding her head and chasing away the suicidal fog that had taken her unawares. She snatched her hand away from the shield's edge, aghast at what she'd been considering, and shoved her parents away from her with her mind, telekinetically gaining the second story before either of them had even landed.
Once in her room, she frantically grabbed for the phone she'd left on the bedside table - but it was too late; the ringing had ceased. A glance at the caller I.D. showed Kitty's number flashing, the little red icon blinking next to those digits indicating she'd left a message.
Thunderous crashing from downstairs halted her trembling fingers before they could push the message retrieval code, reminding her that getting out of the house and finding some kind of help was her first priority. Panicked all over again when the sound of feet pounding on stairs reached her ears, Jean scrambled to the window and wrenched it open, using her teke to hold herself aloft as she slipped outside.
Out of habit, she propelled herself towards the cover of nearby tree branches to prevent anyone below from seeing her defy gravity, only to realize belatedly -and with no small measure of sinking despair - that hiding her powers was going to be completely unnecessary.
Living nightmares were running through the streets in the guise of people, chasing terrified neighbours, family members, and strangers alike, bringing each down with bloody hands and gnashing teeth, the screams of both predator and prey filling the air like a soundtrack of death. Even as her widening green eyes looked on, Jean could see innumerable horrors unfolding in every direction.
There - a frenzied driver crashes his car into a lamp post and is yanked, shouting and cursing, through his cracked windshield, several blank-eyed, blood-soaked people falling upon him ravenously before he's thrown to the ground.
There - a mother with two crying children in tow is racing out of her house and away from a gore-spattered husband already in pursuit, none of the three managing ten steps before falling to one of many circling, maniacal neighbours.
There - down the street, a man steps onto his porch with a rifle in his hands and begins shooting both the living and the recently dead with gleeful abandon, his hoots of psychotic laughter echoing as loudly as each burst of gunfire does.
Glass shattering directly below Jean's feet drew her attention from the macabre insanity unfolding all around her, and she looked down, seeing that her mother had managed to break open the front door. Both wife and husband were now standing on the porch.
Another scream rang out from down the block, attracting her father's interest. His head snapped up, like a dog scenting the air, and then he was darting away, running towards the source of cry. Jean's mother, seemingly deciding to search for quarry of her own, dashed off in the opposite direction, her feet flying in death like they never had in life.
Jean watched them go, overwhelmed with feelings of grief so sharp they left her gasping, before deciding that it was time for her to leave as well. If what had happened to her family - and was currently happening to the doomed residents of Lennox Street - was spreading throughout the city, then she needed to get to her friends.
Casting one last despairing look to the crowds below, to the people still in danger, to the people who were already dead and dying, to the people not even all her power could help, Jean drifted a little higher into the sky, and flew away.
