BEST SERVED COLD
CHAPTER 9: FIRE AND ICE
"Settle down, kid. Yer makin' me nervous."
Bobby threw Logan a sour look, but stopped pacing in front of the circular metal door, placing his back against the wall. He took a deep breath then blew it out again. The Professor had been inside Cerebro for only a half hour, not even a fraction of the time he'd spent looking for Wister, but Bobby was certain he'd find some sign of the Gibbens girl.
"Sorry Logan. I know she's alive. She's gotta be. We just need to know where she is." Logan grunted, but didn't reply.
"AAAAAAARRRRRRGH!"
"PROFESSOR!"
Both Bobby and Logan jumped the door in the same instant, fully intending to tear it down with their bare hands to get to the Professor. Their fears were unfounded though, because a second later, the door parted, revealing Professor Charles Xavier. He sat hunched over in his wheelchair, clutching his forehead with one hand, tears of pain streaming down his face. His eyes were squeezed shut, and it was obvious by the way his jaw worked that he was gritting his teeth.
"Dear God. That poor child," Xavier looked up, but his eyes said that his mind was still partially absent, "such pain, such rage; so much hatred."
"Professor, are you alright?"
Xavier's eyes focused suddenly, as though he'd only just noticed Bobby and Logan.
"Yes; yes, I'll be fine." Xavier took a steadying breath. "The girl is alive, Bobby, just like you thought. I found her on Hart Island." Bobby blanched.
"Jesus, they buried her alive?" Bobby said, horrified. "How did she survive-?"
"Yes, when I checked the medical examiner's office, it was clear the coroner's memories had been tampered with. He certainly believes that he performed an autopsy on Tracy's body, even though that is obviously not true. When Tracy awoke, her powers went out of control. She transformed into a gaseous state, burst out of her own grave, and is now convinced that she is some sort of avenging spirit. The force of her pain and anger ejected me from her mind." The Professor's gaze seemed to burn into Bobby's own, opening a path into his mind. "She's on her way across the bay, into the city. I know this much: she's going to—"
"Hey Chuck, you gonna include me in this little conversation, or can I just go and grab a beer?" This time Xavier awarded Logan an irritated glance. A moment passed while he digested Logan's comment; his expression altered subtly.
"Yes, as a matter of fact." To the conversation or the beer, Xavier didn't specify. "Do you know a pub called 'The Salamander'?" Logan blinked at the Professor's apparent non sequitur.
"Yeah, I been there before. Usually when I'm lookin' for the scum o' the Earth."
"That is precisely why you're going there. One of the men who assaulted Ms. Wister's home is there presently, and young Ms. Gibbens is going to pay him a call soon."
"All right, Professor. Logan, let's go!" Bobby started to turn, his mind already racing with possible ways for the coming confrontation to turn out.
"Bobby." The grave tone in Xavier's voice gave Bobby pause. "Be extremely careful. When I located Tracy on Hart Island, I sensed another presence there, one who almost certainly altered the medical examiner's memories and also helped eject me from Tracy's mind. Whomever they are, they are manipulating young Tracy into this unhinged course of violence and revenge."
"There is almost certainly another telepath guiding her."
Logan pulled the barstool up to the bar nonchalantly, ordering another beer. Bobby snorted, cradling his own drink in one hand. To anyone else, they were just two more guys in a seedy bar, looking to get drunk. Anyone sober though, would notice that the slimmer man hadn't so much as touched his rum-and-coke, while the other, already on his tenth beer, didn't so much as wobble. Showoff.
"Anything?" Bobby's voice was pitched low, and his lips barely moved, but Logan caught every word.
"Not yet," Logan's voice was only fractionally louder, so Bobby's own, less sensitive ears, could hear him. "This's the right place, though."
"How can you tell?"
"The john smells like gasoline."
With those odd words, Logan tipped his beer back. Bobby just looked past him, to the restroom door. A short, pudgy man wearing greasy clothing came out.
"That him?"
"Yep." The empty beer glass came back down to the bar.
"You sure?"
"The nose knows, Bub." Bobby groaned.
I walked right into that.
"All right then," Bobby stood, setting his drink on the bar. Logan also stood, and the two made their way across the small room to the table where the short man sat.
SSSHZZZZZ—CRACK!
Every light in the bar went out, throwing sizzling sparks everywhere. Several patrons complained, cursing loudly.
"Logan, she's here!" Bobby's body began its transformation into living ice.
"Whaddya talkin' about?" The temperature abruptly plunged. Logan's breath streamed out before him, a plume of white vapor. "Oh."
"Hey, what the hell—?!" One of the patrons slammed headfirst into the front door, trying to leave, but the door didn't budge. The man yelped in pain and snatched his hand back as ice crawled slowly over the door, sealing it shut. The windows began to ice over as well.
"Drake, whaddya—"
"It's not me!"
"—tragic—"
"Huh?" Logan's claws snapped out of their sheaths. The voice was thin, spidery, and seemed to come from nowhere, from everywhere, out of the very air around them, which continued to grow steadily colder.
"So—tragic—" The voice grew more distinct, identifiably young, female, and slightly rasping. And very, very, angry.
Suddenly, the little man in the corner, who'd been getting more and more nervous with each passing moment, went three shades of pale. He jumped up and ran to one of the windows, banging on them with his fists. When this failed to damage the ice properly, he grabbed a chair and tried frantically to smash his way out.
"Hey you, where d'you think you're going?" Bobby grabbed the shorter man by one shoulder and spun him around. The short guy dropped the chair, his bulging eyes going wide at the sight of Bobby's icy body. Instantly, the incoherent panic running through them was replaced with rage.
"NO! YOU MUTIE BASTARDS! YOU WON'T GET ME AGAIN!" From his left sleeve, the fat little man produced a thin tube. "EAT THIS, YOU SONNUVA—!" The obscene battle-cry was cut off by a sudden roar as fire exploded across Bobby's stomach. Bobby scream echoed from every corner of the room. Time slowed to crawl as Bobby fell to the floor, Logan began a berserker charge at the short man, and that terrible screaming went on and on. The heating unit mounted to the ceiling started to shake.
Through tears of pain that froze on his cheeks, Bobby saw the boxy-looking thing. Mist had begun flowing out of it like water. A scant handful of seconds later, icicles bled out of the slots. They grew on every ventilation tube that ran across the ceiling. The heating unit rocked and shook like a thing possessed. Logan was howling like a wild animal. The man holding the mini-flamethrower was taking aim, oh-so-slowly, as Bobby tried to get up from the floor. Patrons were screaming and diving beneath tables.
The weight of the ice growing inside the heater became too much. With a tearing screech, the whole thing broke loose from the ceiling. The sound of it shattering on the floor instantly demanded the attention of every person in the bar. They weren't disappointed.
Mist poured down from the hole in the ventilation shaft, like a vaporous waterfall. Everyone present felt a bone-deep chill as a face emerged. Its eyes were contorted up and inward in an expression of incredible pain, and its mouth was twisted downward into an eternal rictus of anguish: the face of Tragedy. The owner of that face followed, no less terrifying: a ghostly spectre wrapped in a burial shroud of pure, frozen mist. It exploded from the column of vapor, arms spread wide, billowing like and angry storm cloud.
"Smoky—"
"No! It's not fucking possible!" Smoky pointed the nozzle straight at the thing, arm outthrust like a lance.
"Remember the mission, Smoky?" Tragedy's voice was a thin, spidery, rasping hiss. Mike's own words, spoken less than a week ago, returned to Smoky's ears in a heartbeat. There'd been only one other person who could have heard them.
"BURN IN HELL, BITCH!" Smoky thumbed the hidden trigger hard.
"Tracy!" Bobby could only watch helplessly as a fresh tongue of bright orange flame flashed through the air. It struck Tragedy's vaporous form square in the chest. Bobby expected many things at once, in that instant: he expected the flame to tear through her insubstantial form. He expected the fire to sear the posters and photographs hanging on the wall behind her. He expected Tracy to die, as he almost had. But he'd forgotten her power.
Tragedy's body sucked in the flame hungrily, expanding to almost double her original size in an instant. She let loose a triumphant howl as the temperature, already below freezing, plummeted again, blanketing everything in a fine layer of white frost. Snow and sleet swirled around the room. Bobby felt better immediately. Logan snapped out of his astonishment, and lashed out in renewed fury.
Even as Tragedy advanced and Smoky readied his next shot, Logan completed his aborted charge. Tragedy pulled up short in startlement as Logan dove across her path, slashing at Smoky. His claws bit into Smoky's wrist, completely severing hand and the tube strapped to it. But he didn't stop there; Logan continued onward, sliding across an ice-covered table and overturning it on his way. Smoky shrieked as blood fountained from his truncated arm, flowing freely with the flammable chemicals spurting from the cut hose. Tragedy resumed her advance. The shrieks stopped as Tragedy's white hand came down on Smoky's wrist, freezing the blood flow instantly, capping the stump in grotesque purple ice. Smoky gaped and gagged like a stranded fish, unable to draw the supremely frozen air into his lungs.
"So pretty," Tragedy rasped, inspecting Smoky's frozen purple stump, "Such a waste." The words! The words were all the same as before, but now mocking, punishing. Smoky's mouth worked in terror, but no sound came out. The hideous mask closed in, stopping just a few inches away from Smoky's nose.
"This is what you get for trying to fuck a mutant," Tragedy hissed, Mike's contemptuous words damning him.
"Tracy!"
At the sound of her old name Tragedy's gaze snapped around. The man made of living ice, the one called 'Bobby' stood up slowly, every movement telegraphing pain. The gaping hole over his stomach was beginning to mend in the deep cold of the room, but was still obvious nonetheless. His friend, the one called 'Logan' (With those neat claws, Tragedy thought), was just now stalking out from behind the table he'd turned over. All six of his claws were out.
"Don't do this, kid."
Smoky quietly slid one foot behind the other.
"Tracy, let us help you! Tell us where the disk is, and we can put them all away for life!" Bobby pleaded.
Frost crunched as Smoky slid his other foot behind the first. The tiny sound riveted Tragedy's attention back to the arsonist, the one who had killed her, and her Aunt Kathy.
Murderer.
"Finish the job," Tragedy pronounced, not turning away. Smoky fell over backwards, whimpering in abject terror, his butt landing on the snow–covered floor. He crab-crawled away, heedless of the damage he was doing to his frozen, torn left wrist. When his back came up against the wall, a small yellow stain began to spread against the inside of his pant leg.
The swirling mist and snow condensed then, merging into Tragedy's body, making it almost solid white. She leaned forward and glided towards Smoky with the definite air of a hangman approaching the gallows. In that instant, she appeared more solid than she had in the last few minutes. Logan took his chance and sprang - into a mistake.
Logan's all-too-solid body crashed through Tragedy's gaseous form, cutting it in half for an instant, before the top rejoined the bottom. It was like leaping through liquid nitrogen. Accordingly, Logan's arms and skin froze over instantly; ice clogged his nose, his mouth and sealed his eyes shut. When he landed on the floor, he slid across the snow frozen into position, ludicrously, like a toboggan. Tragedy regarded his prone form for a moment then continued her march. Bobby was torn between wanting to stop Tracy and wanting to help Logan.
Friendship won over duty; Bobby knew Logan's healing factor would deal with the hypothermia, but he didn't know if it could deal with suffocation. He hobbled to Logan's side and knelt. Logan's arms were moving slowly in fitful, weak circles. They did not respond below the elbow. His claws were frosted solid white all over, and sported backward-pointing icicles from the momentum of his leap. The ice on Logan's face was only a quarter-inch thick, so Bobby had no trouble cracking it away with his power. Logan sucked in a trembling breath and wheezed, "Stop her—!" Smoky's terrified wail lent merit to the suggestion.
Bobby turned just in time to see Tragedy lay her frozen white hands on Smoky's chest. His cry of terror choked off into a gurgle as his tongue expanded inside his mouth, forcing his head back. Icicles oozed from his ears, nose, and the corners of his mouth as his swollen purple tongue bulged out. Smoky's remaining hand was raised in a futile gesture of warding, the fingers curved forever into claws. Then ice began to droop from those as well. In less than a minute, the ice thickened, and Stephen 'Smoky' Bertrick's frozen corpse was entombed in a coffin of solid ice. Tragedy silently withdrew.
"Go," Logan growled. Bobby let him back down to the floor gently, even though he knew Logan's strength was already returning. He squared himself and faced Tragedy. She was already gliding silently back to the center of the room, where the broken ventilation shaft presented the only egress.
"Tracy, please. I know about what happened to your mother. I talked with Katherine Wister on the phone. I know what's going on! Please, for God's sake, help us!" Tragedy stopped a single pace away. For a moment, she was completely still. When she looked up at him, her mask no longer appeared bent into bottomless hate. Now it seemed full of sadness and regret. She laid one ghostly white hand on his icy chest. She traced a line from his collarbone down to the edge of the burn, as if in apology. With a sigh, she turned away, still silent.
"Tracy." She was already beneath the vent, and rising upwards. "Don't go."
Tragedy whirled around, facing him once more. The features of her mask, frozen into eternal impassivity, hadn't moved, but now her posture broadcasted a warning. Whatever momentary softness she'd shown a kindred spirit had hardened. Her parting words were a frozen winter wind that promised a blizzard in the making.
"Don't get in my way."