Away from the fire, Chapter 3

A scent - fleshly, with an overtone of metal and electricity - hits her nose, more sensitive than most. She laces her fingers into the clefts between the stones, and starts to climb, holding on effortlessly. Her groping hands find a hole, a tiny ventilation shaft more than a window, and she lifts herself to peer over the edge.

It is quite dark, but she can see perfectly. And besides, the smell is much stronger, here. Her lip curls in hatred as she sees the man asleep on the bed. Bastard.

Spider knew that he was trying to help. But he wasn't. He alienated the Normals, damaged his own kind even as he struggled for them.

Maybe when they saw that he had been eliminated by another mutant, they would understand that the mutants were ready to go that extra mile for peace.

Stick thin arms slip in through the window, followed by an only marginally thicker body. Then her legs, then her bare feet with their abnormally long toes - she forms herself up on the floor, a creature of angles and long thin limbs. She keeps her huge eyes fixed on the slumbering man, and creeps forward.

The knife is long, and quite sharp; even as she moves, she pulls it from the sheaf strapped to her thigh. She raises it above him, taking a moment to find the most vulnerable spot, and plunges it down, to snuff out the life of the danger to both human and mutant-kind.

And then she freezes, struggling with a knife that will move neither up nor down. Her mutated eyes are not capable of tears, but she is filled with enough choking despair that she wishes they were. She lets go of the blade, and scuttles to the window. But the knife gets there first, stretching into a sharpened bar to block her desperate escape.

"Well, well." Magneto sits up, stands up, and faces her. She quailes away, pressing back into her corner. "A mutant assassin. How… original." He raises a hand; the knife flies to it, retaining its original shape. "But not a very original, or clever, attempt." His voice is sharp, cold, mocking. "Did you really think I wouldn't wake?" She curses her own lack of forethought, her lack of planning, her lack of a (God!) a plastic weapon that he couldn't control. "Who sent you?" His voice cracks like a whip.

Spider knows she must answer; silence would bring retribution on all parties, Mutant and Normal. "No one," she replies, her voice harsh, angry. "I came myself, to kill you, so the Normals would not fear us, so they would not try to persecute us, so at last we could have peace." They are both fanatics, him and her; they are simply fighting for different ends of the same side.

"Foolish child," Magneto says; it is almost a sigh. He knows he cannot be merciful, cannot let her live; blinded by her fanaticism, she will try to kill him, again and again, until one or both of them is dead. "However…" He pauses, thinking. "You might be of some use to me." He is unsure, suspicious of everyone, even those working for him. He demands loyalty, total loyalty. And there is one on his side who has not yet proved that loyalty - not enough.

"You want me to what?" Pyro is aghast. He plays with the lighter in his hands, seemingly comforted by the bright gold flame. He looks again at the mutant, huddled in her chains. Her hair is a short, spike-straggled shadow, her eyes huge, bulging, their faint glowing red dominating her face. He thinks she is tall, taller than him, but far lighter, stretched out like the spider she is named for. "I can't kill a mutant!"

"It's just the same as disposing of those Normals," Magneto says, soothingly. "She's a traitor to her own kind. She tried to kill me. Pyro, we are fighting a war. We can not afford to shrink from even this most unpleasant of duties." The lighter moves away from Pyro's restless fingers, hovering in the air. The flame glows, steady, unflickering. "It's easy, Pyro." Magneto tells him. "You've done the same sort of thing before."

The power is there, a sleeping dragon curled around his heart. Flame hovers in his hands as he looks at her. Of course, they are fighting a war. Of course, he must be ruthless. His hands tremble; he clenches his fists. The flame goes out.

"I won't do it."