For my next trick: borrowed characters AND original characters!
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Toad found he regretted that the X-Men had snatched Jen. She would have liked to have seen the news broadcast when the humans finally figured out that it had been radiation that had washed over them. It had been a beautiful thing, with the kind of panic and confusion that cannot be faked. The best part had been when they warned the good citizens of New York, Washington, and Philadelphia not to leave their respective cities for fear of killing the rest of the country and the world and then they had cut immediately to scenes of the roads out of those cities so clogged with cars that people were walking. The only part Jen wouldn't have liked was the footage of the people in the advanced stages of radiation poisoning. Those images were getting more and more frequent, and as it happened Philadelphia seemed to be keeping up on that count with its longer-affected neighbors. Of course that might or might not have had something to do with the fact that Toad had slipped and tweaked the power on the Apparatus up a bit after the jaunt to D.C. He thought it would speed up the power manifesting and he was right; it merely had a side effect of killing Philadelphians in droves. He would have turned it back down again afterward, but now it seemed as if they were finished with it for the time and if they were to use it again the increased speed would make up for the increased deaths.
Of course he also regretted the loss of Jen since it earned him a trip to the Overlook for a day or two. He had never liked it in there, not because it was cold and wet so much as because it relied on Magneto's power. If the old codger had taken a blow to the head during that day or two and had forgotten how to do his trick with the magnetic fields Toad would have been stuck for a long time. It wasn't as if he had done any great misdeed, either; one of him and four X-Men were bad odds, even if he could have beaten any two of them easily. And the girl wasn't even necessary any longer; it was merely a shame that they had taken her away before she could see that newscast. He didn't suppose an old stick-up-his-ass idiot like Xavier would let his students watch such as shocking a program as that, and that was provided he was calling Jen a student. Xavier did have ample room below that mansion of his to hide a recalcitrant young mutant or two. Toad hoped she duplicated them all to death.
Now it was business as usual. Probably the two most important cities in the country had ground to a halt and were getting used to the idea that they were all going to die, and it was left to the Brotherhood to show them that being a mutant was not the same as being dead. It was rather more difficult that Toad had been expecting, as a matter of fact. He had spent the last few days in D.C., talking to this or that important person, and not one of them had believed him when he said that they were mutants. One senator had had sparks periodically coming out of his hands even as Toad had spoken to him and yet the man had insisted that it was radiation poisoning and he had only hours left to live. It was pathetic, really.
At the moment one of him was holding an interview with millionaire businessman Vijay Sanjor, another was speaking to Senator Catherine Zinetti (D-OH), and a third was en route to Philadelphia to check up on Mayor Patterson. Between Sanjor's attempts at striking him with a lamp and Zinetti's horrified shock he was distracted and didn't immediately understand the message aimed at the third him.
"I repeat: Toad, turn off. Do not continue to Philadelphia." It was Mystique and she didn't sound pleased.
"Sorry. Turning off now. Why?"
"We've given up on Philadelphia. It is nothing but a ghost town. There are live targets in D.C. and New York."
"D.C. again, then?"
"Griffin Banko, 1420 Madison. Perhaps Washington's new mayor." The transmission cut off.
The entire conversation was just like Mystique. She never gave quite enough information. She did love to have more information than everyone else; it made it difficult to work with her at times.
As he got himself turned around toward D.C. he had to wonder just exactly why he had been called back from Philadelphia. It was a ghost town now, she had said. It was probably just that they had received notice that Mayor Patterson was dead. On the other hand, could it have meant that the entire city had died? Or enough of it that they no longer had reason to bother with it? Could the mutants have died also? That would be a shame. If so he would have to turn the power on the Apparatus back down just to be sure.
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Greg had to have been the last person in the city of New York to know about the terrorist attack. He had been taking a nap when the wave had originally passed through, so he had found himself confused when his friends had all started to talk about it. And it had only gotten worse. He had been the last one of his group of friends to hear that it might have been a biological weapon and now he was the last of his group of friends to have heard that it was really radiation. Of course by then his group of friends had gotten smaller. Pollack was dead. The twins were both mysteriously gone. Vern had called to say that Noelle couldn't even hold a pencil anymore, much less a phone. Rob wasn't at home and only an e-mail auto- response saying he had spontaneously gone on vacation marked his leaving. The list went on. If he counted not-so-close friends he was near two dozen on the KIA or MIA list, and a dozen more on the critical list. His mother was doing badly enough that his father refused to talk about her. Maybe she was dead. Not that his father was the kind of man who would have hidden the truth from him just because it would hurt. That made it worse, even less understandable. And now the phones had stopped working.
By the time he had gotten it together to pack and leave his apartment he knew it would have been a waste to take his car. For days it had been faster to walk. He brought his two suitcases down to the sidewalk and started walking.
He hadn't been feeling too bad. Nauseous and a little twitchy, but that wasn't really that unexpected. His skin itched, which made him nervous, but it wasn't really his own health that he was worrying about. Still, he couldn't worry about the health of his friends and family either; it took too much of him. As cruel as it was, he cut off all of the people it was too painful to think about. Pollack, his parents, Noelle. He only allowed himself to think of people whose problems he hadn't heard about. His ex- girlfriend Julie, for example. Hell, she might not have been in New York anymore. He hoped she wasn't.
After an hour or two he was tired of thinking about even the people who might have been perfectly fine. He tried to block the worry out of his mind entirely, but he just ended up feeling sorry for himself. Why did it have to be him? His neighborhood? Why did it have to come now? He hadn't done anything with his life. He didn't even have a girlfriend. He was carrying almost everything he owned with him in his suitcases. And maybe the worst of it was that no one even cared. If he had talked to someone else they would just have come back saying their whole family was already dead and they couldn't keep food down anymore because of the radiation. There was no time to care, no time to think about anyone but yourself. Everybody was too busy trying to save their own lives. He definitely wasn't any different.
It was a few minutes later that he thought to wonder if it was such a bad thing that he didn't have a girlfriend. At this point she would have been dead or dying. Then again if everyone was dying anyway, wouldn't it be better to live out the last little bit with someone else, someone you love? He wasn't quite ready yet to accept that he was going to die. Everyone else was dying, yes, but that didn't mean he would.
Less than an hour later he was forcibly reminded of his own mortality. It all happened very fast. He heard a scream and some yells, but he had no reason to believe they had anything to do with him. But then someone shot at him. He didn't see who it was or anything about them, but he felt the wind of it and heard the crack of the gunshot. It was terrifying. He dropped to the ground, telling himself that he wasn't the specific target of the shooter. Then he heard another shot and this time he could also see it; it lodged in one of his suitcases. Then he saw the man with the gun. He looked insane, and he was coming straight for Greg.
"Stay the hell away from me, freak!" yelled the man, waving the gun at him.
He couldn't begin to answer. None of it made any sense. He prayed the man would go away.
The man stopped about twelve feet from him. "Do you think anyone would stop me from killing you right now, freak? There'd be people'd call me a hero."
"Loo...look," said Greg, "I don't know who you think I am, but..."
The man pointed the gun at Greg's head, so Greg scooted back suddenly and held up the closer suitcase as a shield. He heard a gunshot but didn't feel it so he jumped up and ran. He felt the suitcase buck in his hands once, but he didn't drop it. Even when he made it around a corner and out of the man's line of fire he didn't stop. He didn't stop at the next block, or the block after. He didn't stop until he tripped and skidded along the pavement on his knees. He was wheezing from the run and the pain in his knees didn't help, so he stood up and put his hands over his head, trying to regain the ability to breathe.
"It's you, isn't it?" said a woman's voice behind him.
There hadn't been anyone close to him when he stopped, so he whirled around, afraid. She was short and she wouldn't have caused fear at all if not for the blood all over her blouse. "Sorry," he said, backing away, "I don't know you."
"Of course you don't, but I know you."
"I don't think you do."
"Sure I do. Here." She took a step toward him and held something out, so he backed off quickly. "Oh come on."
It was a Polaroid. Gripped with a curiosity he wouldn't have thought he still had after everything he had gone through, he snatched it and backed off again. The picture was of a wall and specifically what was painted on it. It was a kind of a Wanted poster. There was a painting in white of someone at the top and below that there were red words: 'Mutant. Has Killed Over 100. Do NOT Let Him Touch You.'
"So?"
She chuckled. "That's you. Don't deny it."
He looked at the picture again, particularly at the painting of the person. It reminded him of a picture he had drawn as a 6-year-old, a self-portrait. Still, he didn't look that much like the guy. The guy was obviously black, but that was most of the similarity. Maybe that was enough for crazy white people. He threw the picture at the woman, so of course it floated gently to the ground.
"That ain' me." Now he sounded like a stereotypical uneducated black dude. That would DEFINITELY prove his case. "I don't know why you're so sure that's me, but it's not."
Now she looked confused. "You're really not?"
"No." He stopped for a second or two, but she certainly didn't seem dangerous, so he saw no reason not to ask a question. "Why do you want to find that guy anyway?"
"We need to stick together. Nobody wants to believe they're a mutant, so they're attacking the people who prove they are."
Now Greg was scared of the woman again. Was she saying she was a mutant? And what was she talking about; nobody admits they're a mutant? She was probably insane, but that didn't mean she wasn't a mutant.
"You're not like that, are you?" She took a step toward him. He couldn't help but notice the huge blood stain on her blouse again.
"No way. I'm not like that." He wasn't sure what he was saying he wasn't, but it didn't matter right now.
"Don't worry about the blood. It's mine. That's why I'm trying to find HIM."
Greg had no idea what to make of that. Suddenly she didn't seem so crazy. That was her blood? On the other hand, just because she said it was her blood didn't mean it was. He couldn't see any wounds, and that much blood doesn't come from a paper cut.
When he looked at her the next time she was eyeing his suitcase. Despite the two bullet holes it still held a lot more than she had. "Why don't you come with me?" she said suddenly.
"No," said Greg flatly. He turned and walked away. He was still going to find a way to get of the city, even if he did run into more people who thought he was the killer mutant guy and tried to kill him. He just had to get out.
"You won't make it!" called the woman behind him. He continued to walk away. He saw a blur, and there she was in front of him. "You won't make it."
He fell over backwards in his surprise. He came close to a heart attack, he was certain. "What?" It was the only word that would come out of his mouth.
"I said you won't make it. They got me and that's not so easy to do anymore."
He stared at her. She had done something a lot stranger than grow another head.
"You haven't been up that way since the attack, have you? Let me be clear: if there is the slightest chance that you are a mutant, they will kill you."
After a minute or two she got bored of waiting for him to recover from the shock and reached down to grab him. He tried to squirm away but she was much faster than he was and she had him by the arm and was pulling him up before he knew what was happening. When he was on his feet again he snatched up his remaining suitcase and started to run.
"Good," he heard her call out behind him, "at least that direction you'll stay away from them. Just make sure you don't get killed for the suitcase!"
He ran.
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Jen stayed in her room all day. What else was she going to do, since they wouldn't let her leave? Play nicely with the other children? Ha. The first time she had gone down to the common room some boy had knocked her down then had pretended it was an accident. One girl had been crying at the time. "My parents. My parents are in New York. They're dying," she had sobbed. It had become obvious to Jen by then that it was time for her to leave, but even so she couldn't make it out the door before someone set fire to her hair. She hadn't seen who it was but it hardly mattered; they had ALL screamed at her as she tried to put it out. After that she had gone immediately back up to her room.
The only person she had "met" who she didn't hate was Joey, and she had never seen him. He was a telepath, and he talked in her mind a lot like Xavier had. The difference was that he didn't tell her she was evil or wrong or stupid or anything. He told her that she had done a good thing. People were becoming mutants, he told her. People were also dying, which scared him, but a lot of people were becoming mutants. He told her that the newsman said that four or five people out of every hundred were already obviously mutants, and it was going up all the time. Maybe people would stop dying and would start realizing that they were mutants.
It was late afternoon when she heard a knock on her door. She wondered whether it was going to be Cyclops with a lecture or some student with a baseball bat. She walked over to the door and asked through it, "Who is it?"
"Joey."
She was confused. He had first spoken into her mind two days before, but he had never mentioned anything about meeting her face-to-face.
"I was afraid the Professor would notice if I talked to you and would watch me, but this time I have to see you."
That turned her confusion into nervousness, but she opened the door anyway. Joey came in and closed the door behind him. As it turned out Joey was a little older than Jen was, but he was the same height as her. He had a determined look on his face, one that only made Jen more nervous.
"Do you know what was different about Philadelphia?" he asked. He was still standing, but Jen sat back on her bed.
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"They didn't change anything between D.C. and Philadelphia?"
"I don't think so. Maybe they did. Why?"
"Almost everybody in Philadelphia is dead. They're saying maybe only 2% of the population is still alive, and some of THEM are sick."
"No way."
"I didn't know whether it was the Brotherhood or something else."
"It has to have been something else! The Apparatus doesn't kill people like that!"
Joey was staring at her. He looked like he was deciding whether or not to hate her.
"I just wanted to help! I just wanted to make people mutants so they would see what it's like and so they don't hate us anymore."
"No you didn't. You didn't want any of that."
Fear filled her up. She had forgotten that he could read her mind. It was hard to remember that kind of thing.
"I don't know what to think," said Joey finally. "It's good that people are becoming mutants, but if whole cities of people are going to die...Don't go back there, Jen."
"What?"
"Don't go back there. There are still four Magnetos so they could still kill three cities. That's bad enough."
"But..." Where was she supposed to go, if not back to the Brotherhood? She couldn't go back to her family. They all thought she was dead. And she couldn't exactly stay here, not with all of the adults lecturing and the students screaming at her and attacking her.
"It's true; your family thinks you're dead. I checked." Joey was looking at her carefully now. "But that doesn't mean you have to go back to the Brotherhood."
"Then where do I go?"
"Stay here and we'll show everyone you're not a bad person."
"No."
"We can show them that Magneto used you. There's another girl, Rogue. He used her, too."
"Magneto didn't USE me."
"Yes he did." There was a kind of dark glint in his eyes now. "He used you and then he let you get taken. Why would he have let you alone with one Toad when he knew the Professor knew about you?"
Jen didn't know how to answer that. Maybe Magneto did use her. But Toad wouldn't. Toad really did like her, and she would go back to be with him.
"Couldn't Toad have protected you, if he had really tried? Couldn't he have stopped Cyclops from just picking you up and taking you away?"
"Get out of here."
"It won't make me any less right."
"You bastard, Xavier sent you! You're trying to trick me!"
Joey smiled. "If it makes you feel better to believe that then go right ahead." He turned and left without a word of goodbye.
She threw herself down onto the bed. The real truth was that no one wanted her, not even Toad. She felt tears starting to come out and didn't even try to stop them. No one had wanted her ever since she had made her first duplicate. She didn't even know if anyone COULD want her anymore. The only thing she could think of was that if she left and then pretended she wasn't a mutant maybe someone would see her and want her.
It sounded like as good an idea as any. Now she just had to figure out a way to get away.
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Toad found he regretted that the X-Men had snatched Jen. She would have liked to have seen the news broadcast when the humans finally figured out that it had been radiation that had washed over them. It had been a beautiful thing, with the kind of panic and confusion that cannot be faked. The best part had been when they warned the good citizens of New York, Washington, and Philadelphia not to leave their respective cities for fear of killing the rest of the country and the world and then they had cut immediately to scenes of the roads out of those cities so clogged with cars that people were walking. The only part Jen wouldn't have liked was the footage of the people in the advanced stages of radiation poisoning. Those images were getting more and more frequent, and as it happened Philadelphia seemed to be keeping up on that count with its longer-affected neighbors. Of course that might or might not have had something to do with the fact that Toad had slipped and tweaked the power on the Apparatus up a bit after the jaunt to D.C. He thought it would speed up the power manifesting and he was right; it merely had a side effect of killing Philadelphians in droves. He would have turned it back down again afterward, but now it seemed as if they were finished with it for the time and if they were to use it again the increased speed would make up for the increased deaths.
Of course he also regretted the loss of Jen since it earned him a trip to the Overlook for a day or two. He had never liked it in there, not because it was cold and wet so much as because it relied on Magneto's power. If the old codger had taken a blow to the head during that day or two and had forgotten how to do his trick with the magnetic fields Toad would have been stuck for a long time. It wasn't as if he had done any great misdeed, either; one of him and four X-Men were bad odds, even if he could have beaten any two of them easily. And the girl wasn't even necessary any longer; it was merely a shame that they had taken her away before she could see that newscast. He didn't suppose an old stick-up-his-ass idiot like Xavier would let his students watch such as shocking a program as that, and that was provided he was calling Jen a student. Xavier did have ample room below that mansion of his to hide a recalcitrant young mutant or two. Toad hoped she duplicated them all to death.
Now it was business as usual. Probably the two most important cities in the country had ground to a halt and were getting used to the idea that they were all going to die, and it was left to the Brotherhood to show them that being a mutant was not the same as being dead. It was rather more difficult that Toad had been expecting, as a matter of fact. He had spent the last few days in D.C., talking to this or that important person, and not one of them had believed him when he said that they were mutants. One senator had had sparks periodically coming out of his hands even as Toad had spoken to him and yet the man had insisted that it was radiation poisoning and he had only hours left to live. It was pathetic, really.
At the moment one of him was holding an interview with millionaire businessman Vijay Sanjor, another was speaking to Senator Catherine Zinetti (D-OH), and a third was en route to Philadelphia to check up on Mayor Patterson. Between Sanjor's attempts at striking him with a lamp and Zinetti's horrified shock he was distracted and didn't immediately understand the message aimed at the third him.
"I repeat: Toad, turn off. Do not continue to Philadelphia." It was Mystique and she didn't sound pleased.
"Sorry. Turning off now. Why?"
"We've given up on Philadelphia. It is nothing but a ghost town. There are live targets in D.C. and New York."
"D.C. again, then?"
"Griffin Banko, 1420 Madison. Perhaps Washington's new mayor." The transmission cut off.
The entire conversation was just like Mystique. She never gave quite enough information. She did love to have more information than everyone else; it made it difficult to work with her at times.
As he got himself turned around toward D.C. he had to wonder just exactly why he had been called back from Philadelphia. It was a ghost town now, she had said. It was probably just that they had received notice that Mayor Patterson was dead. On the other hand, could it have meant that the entire city had died? Or enough of it that they no longer had reason to bother with it? Could the mutants have died also? That would be a shame. If so he would have to turn the power on the Apparatus back down just to be sure.
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Greg had to have been the last person in the city of New York to know about the terrorist attack. He had been taking a nap when the wave had originally passed through, so he had found himself confused when his friends had all started to talk about it. And it had only gotten worse. He had been the last one of his group of friends to hear that it might have been a biological weapon and now he was the last of his group of friends to have heard that it was really radiation. Of course by then his group of friends had gotten smaller. Pollack was dead. The twins were both mysteriously gone. Vern had called to say that Noelle couldn't even hold a pencil anymore, much less a phone. Rob wasn't at home and only an e-mail auto- response saying he had spontaneously gone on vacation marked his leaving. The list went on. If he counted not-so-close friends he was near two dozen on the KIA or MIA list, and a dozen more on the critical list. His mother was doing badly enough that his father refused to talk about her. Maybe she was dead. Not that his father was the kind of man who would have hidden the truth from him just because it would hurt. That made it worse, even less understandable. And now the phones had stopped working.
By the time he had gotten it together to pack and leave his apartment he knew it would have been a waste to take his car. For days it had been faster to walk. He brought his two suitcases down to the sidewalk and started walking.
He hadn't been feeling too bad. Nauseous and a little twitchy, but that wasn't really that unexpected. His skin itched, which made him nervous, but it wasn't really his own health that he was worrying about. Still, he couldn't worry about the health of his friends and family either; it took too much of him. As cruel as it was, he cut off all of the people it was too painful to think about. Pollack, his parents, Noelle. He only allowed himself to think of people whose problems he hadn't heard about. His ex- girlfriend Julie, for example. Hell, she might not have been in New York anymore. He hoped she wasn't.
After an hour or two he was tired of thinking about even the people who might have been perfectly fine. He tried to block the worry out of his mind entirely, but he just ended up feeling sorry for himself. Why did it have to be him? His neighborhood? Why did it have to come now? He hadn't done anything with his life. He didn't even have a girlfriend. He was carrying almost everything he owned with him in his suitcases. And maybe the worst of it was that no one even cared. If he had talked to someone else they would just have come back saying their whole family was already dead and they couldn't keep food down anymore because of the radiation. There was no time to care, no time to think about anyone but yourself. Everybody was too busy trying to save their own lives. He definitely wasn't any different.
It was a few minutes later that he thought to wonder if it was such a bad thing that he didn't have a girlfriend. At this point she would have been dead or dying. Then again if everyone was dying anyway, wouldn't it be better to live out the last little bit with someone else, someone you love? He wasn't quite ready yet to accept that he was going to die. Everyone else was dying, yes, but that didn't mean he would.
Less than an hour later he was forcibly reminded of his own mortality. It all happened very fast. He heard a scream and some yells, but he had no reason to believe they had anything to do with him. But then someone shot at him. He didn't see who it was or anything about them, but he felt the wind of it and heard the crack of the gunshot. It was terrifying. He dropped to the ground, telling himself that he wasn't the specific target of the shooter. Then he heard another shot and this time he could also see it; it lodged in one of his suitcases. Then he saw the man with the gun. He looked insane, and he was coming straight for Greg.
"Stay the hell away from me, freak!" yelled the man, waving the gun at him.
He couldn't begin to answer. None of it made any sense. He prayed the man would go away.
The man stopped about twelve feet from him. "Do you think anyone would stop me from killing you right now, freak? There'd be people'd call me a hero."
"Loo...look," said Greg, "I don't know who you think I am, but..."
The man pointed the gun at Greg's head, so Greg scooted back suddenly and held up the closer suitcase as a shield. He heard a gunshot but didn't feel it so he jumped up and ran. He felt the suitcase buck in his hands once, but he didn't drop it. Even when he made it around a corner and out of the man's line of fire he didn't stop. He didn't stop at the next block, or the block after. He didn't stop until he tripped and skidded along the pavement on his knees. He was wheezing from the run and the pain in his knees didn't help, so he stood up and put his hands over his head, trying to regain the ability to breathe.
"It's you, isn't it?" said a woman's voice behind him.
There hadn't been anyone close to him when he stopped, so he whirled around, afraid. She was short and she wouldn't have caused fear at all if not for the blood all over her blouse. "Sorry," he said, backing away, "I don't know you."
"Of course you don't, but I know you."
"I don't think you do."
"Sure I do. Here." She took a step toward him and held something out, so he backed off quickly. "Oh come on."
It was a Polaroid. Gripped with a curiosity he wouldn't have thought he still had after everything he had gone through, he snatched it and backed off again. The picture was of a wall and specifically what was painted on it. It was a kind of a Wanted poster. There was a painting in white of someone at the top and below that there were red words: 'Mutant. Has Killed Over 100. Do NOT Let Him Touch You.'
"So?"
She chuckled. "That's you. Don't deny it."
He looked at the picture again, particularly at the painting of the person. It reminded him of a picture he had drawn as a 6-year-old, a self-portrait. Still, he didn't look that much like the guy. The guy was obviously black, but that was most of the similarity. Maybe that was enough for crazy white people. He threw the picture at the woman, so of course it floated gently to the ground.
"That ain' me." Now he sounded like a stereotypical uneducated black dude. That would DEFINITELY prove his case. "I don't know why you're so sure that's me, but it's not."
Now she looked confused. "You're really not?"
"No." He stopped for a second or two, but she certainly didn't seem dangerous, so he saw no reason not to ask a question. "Why do you want to find that guy anyway?"
"We need to stick together. Nobody wants to believe they're a mutant, so they're attacking the people who prove they are."
Now Greg was scared of the woman again. Was she saying she was a mutant? And what was she talking about; nobody admits they're a mutant? She was probably insane, but that didn't mean she wasn't a mutant.
"You're not like that, are you?" She took a step toward him. He couldn't help but notice the huge blood stain on her blouse again.
"No way. I'm not like that." He wasn't sure what he was saying he wasn't, but it didn't matter right now.
"Don't worry about the blood. It's mine. That's why I'm trying to find HIM."
Greg had no idea what to make of that. Suddenly she didn't seem so crazy. That was her blood? On the other hand, just because she said it was her blood didn't mean it was. He couldn't see any wounds, and that much blood doesn't come from a paper cut.
When he looked at her the next time she was eyeing his suitcase. Despite the two bullet holes it still held a lot more than she had. "Why don't you come with me?" she said suddenly.
"No," said Greg flatly. He turned and walked away. He was still going to find a way to get of the city, even if he did run into more people who thought he was the killer mutant guy and tried to kill him. He just had to get out.
"You won't make it!" called the woman behind him. He continued to walk away. He saw a blur, and there she was in front of him. "You won't make it."
He fell over backwards in his surprise. He came close to a heart attack, he was certain. "What?" It was the only word that would come out of his mouth.
"I said you won't make it. They got me and that's not so easy to do anymore."
He stared at her. She had done something a lot stranger than grow another head.
"You haven't been up that way since the attack, have you? Let me be clear: if there is the slightest chance that you are a mutant, they will kill you."
After a minute or two she got bored of waiting for him to recover from the shock and reached down to grab him. He tried to squirm away but she was much faster than he was and she had him by the arm and was pulling him up before he knew what was happening. When he was on his feet again he snatched up his remaining suitcase and started to run.
"Good," he heard her call out behind him, "at least that direction you'll stay away from them. Just make sure you don't get killed for the suitcase!"
He ran.
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Jen stayed in her room all day. What else was she going to do, since they wouldn't let her leave? Play nicely with the other children? Ha. The first time she had gone down to the common room some boy had knocked her down then had pretended it was an accident. One girl had been crying at the time. "My parents. My parents are in New York. They're dying," she had sobbed. It had become obvious to Jen by then that it was time for her to leave, but even so she couldn't make it out the door before someone set fire to her hair. She hadn't seen who it was but it hardly mattered; they had ALL screamed at her as she tried to put it out. After that she had gone immediately back up to her room.
The only person she had "met" who she didn't hate was Joey, and she had never seen him. He was a telepath, and he talked in her mind a lot like Xavier had. The difference was that he didn't tell her she was evil or wrong or stupid or anything. He told her that she had done a good thing. People were becoming mutants, he told her. People were also dying, which scared him, but a lot of people were becoming mutants. He told her that the newsman said that four or five people out of every hundred were already obviously mutants, and it was going up all the time. Maybe people would stop dying and would start realizing that they were mutants.
It was late afternoon when she heard a knock on her door. She wondered whether it was going to be Cyclops with a lecture or some student with a baseball bat. She walked over to the door and asked through it, "Who is it?"
"Joey."
She was confused. He had first spoken into her mind two days before, but he had never mentioned anything about meeting her face-to-face.
"I was afraid the Professor would notice if I talked to you and would watch me, but this time I have to see you."
That turned her confusion into nervousness, but she opened the door anyway. Joey came in and closed the door behind him. As it turned out Joey was a little older than Jen was, but he was the same height as her. He had a determined look on his face, one that only made Jen more nervous.
"Do you know what was different about Philadelphia?" he asked. He was still standing, but Jen sat back on her bed.
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"They didn't change anything between D.C. and Philadelphia?"
"I don't think so. Maybe they did. Why?"
"Almost everybody in Philadelphia is dead. They're saying maybe only 2% of the population is still alive, and some of THEM are sick."
"No way."
"I didn't know whether it was the Brotherhood or something else."
"It has to have been something else! The Apparatus doesn't kill people like that!"
Joey was staring at her. He looked like he was deciding whether or not to hate her.
"I just wanted to help! I just wanted to make people mutants so they would see what it's like and so they don't hate us anymore."
"No you didn't. You didn't want any of that."
Fear filled her up. She had forgotten that he could read her mind. It was hard to remember that kind of thing.
"I don't know what to think," said Joey finally. "It's good that people are becoming mutants, but if whole cities of people are going to die...Don't go back there, Jen."
"What?"
"Don't go back there. There are still four Magnetos so they could still kill three cities. That's bad enough."
"But..." Where was she supposed to go, if not back to the Brotherhood? She couldn't go back to her family. They all thought she was dead. And she couldn't exactly stay here, not with all of the adults lecturing and the students screaming at her and attacking her.
"It's true; your family thinks you're dead. I checked." Joey was looking at her carefully now. "But that doesn't mean you have to go back to the Brotherhood."
"Then where do I go?"
"Stay here and we'll show everyone you're not a bad person."
"No."
"We can show them that Magneto used you. There's another girl, Rogue. He used her, too."
"Magneto didn't USE me."
"Yes he did." There was a kind of dark glint in his eyes now. "He used you and then he let you get taken. Why would he have let you alone with one Toad when he knew the Professor knew about you?"
Jen didn't know how to answer that. Maybe Magneto did use her. But Toad wouldn't. Toad really did like her, and she would go back to be with him.
"Couldn't Toad have protected you, if he had really tried? Couldn't he have stopped Cyclops from just picking you up and taking you away?"
"Get out of here."
"It won't make me any less right."
"You bastard, Xavier sent you! You're trying to trick me!"
Joey smiled. "If it makes you feel better to believe that then go right ahead." He turned and left without a word of goodbye.
She threw herself down onto the bed. The real truth was that no one wanted her, not even Toad. She felt tears starting to come out and didn't even try to stop them. No one had wanted her ever since she had made her first duplicate. She didn't even know if anyone COULD want her anymore. The only thing she could think of was that if she left and then pretended she wasn't a mutant maybe someone would see her and want her.
It sounded like as good an idea as any. Now she just had to figure out a way to get away.