no, he says. He looks at himself in the mirror and says it again, stronger, louder. no no nonono.
The sound of his voice is haggard and limp. It slaps off the mirror, flat, and he winces anyway.
Alex's memories begin with Genosha. They begin with Tam, with her training him in a magistrate's duties, with her hard body hurried and demanding against him at night. His memories are full of the horrendous Cameron Hodge, of the mutates' blank stares, of the nationalist pride instilled in him during training.
He doesn't spend much time thinking about anything before Genosha. He understands the energy that sprays from his hands in a way that seems too polished to be natural talent, but he doesn't want to know how he gained that expertise. Alex spends most of his time learning to be somebody new.
"You're the perfect magistrate," Tam often tells him, wildness biting behind her eyes. Admiration and lust are the same thing to her, and Alex accepts it as the closest she'll come to loving him. She watches him as he decimates rogue mutants with the power in his hands, and she tells him that the two of them, they have A Future in Genosha.
It's a motivational speech right out of the pamphlets they hand out to newly recruited magistrates, but Alex doesn't mind. A future is easier to deal with than a non-existent past.
Genosha smells like angry wind and dried things. Alex gets nosebleeds, all the time, because the air in his quarters is parched and slightly chilly. All of his bedclothes go to the laundry spotted with blood, rust and brown and crimson and brick, and the back of his tongue tastes constantly of salt and iron.
He finds he likes the taste. Tam, laughing and bare, licks it from his face, leaving it smeared across her mouth and looking like a fox after it's killed. The sight of blood on her teeth makes him hungry, every time.
"You want to take me?" Burk sneers, circling. Alex watches as Burk crouches, watches the heavy muscles in his thighs contract, tense. "You want to come on and fight me, Summers?"
"No," Alex says, but takes a step forward anyway. He doesn't look at Tam, who's watching with her arms crossed, smiling and indulgent. Alex takes a breath, dried grass and dirty metal, smell of sweat and dust and leather. Burk is making threatening gestures and the other Magistrates are gathering, and Alex grins, wolfish.
"No," he says again. "I want to put you down."
Burk frowns and opens his mouth to scoff, but Alex is moving fast and silent and the crunch of his boot-treads against Burk's teeth ends it, already. The other Magistrates don't say anything as first Burk's bleeding face, then the rest of his body, hits the ground. Alex licks his teeth and listens to his heart, which is beating steady, strong and slow. He doesn't feel strained at all.
"Where the fuck did you come from, Summers?" Melu asks, her voice dusty and hushed, and the grin slides from his face.
"I know they don't like me. That's fine. I don't need to be liked."
Tam purses her mouth. "Some of them don't trust you."
"You trust me."
"Yeah. You give good head."
Alex keeps working on his rifle's calibration. Eventually Tam gets up and leaves. She doesn't say anything else before she goes.
It's a grey and dingy morning and Alex is with Cameron Hodge at the incineration facility. Hodge lurches about, his mechanical legs scuttling and the wires that wind through his body twisting with each movement. The monster knows that Alex hates him, and takes every opportunity he can to use that to his advantage or amusement.
"Someday this won't even be necessary," Hodge says. His voice is tinny, pitched higher than it should be, streaked with malice. It pierces Alex's ears like long shiny metal slivers; he clenches his jaw and stares ahead, the thick greasy clouds coming from the enormous smokestack of the facility.
Hodge keeps talking anyway, his voice laced with satisfaction. "Eventually we'll have eliminated them all, all the deviants with filth in their blood, purify the line, cleanse humanity of its freaks and parasites. My doing, Summers. My work will bring us to that glorious day."
"Mein fuhrer," Alex murmurs. Hodge rounds on him, the long metal neck of his construct body whipping his head around to pull up inches from Alex's.
"Shortsighted mutie," Hodge hisses, his breath hot, acrid like burned engine oil. Alex bites down, keeping himself silent. He's already up for disciplinary action after that fight with Burk; the last thing he needs is Hodge's complaints against him.
Hodge's eyes scan him, once, twice, before the legs jerk into motion and he scuttles off, a gigantic crablike scurry that is horribly fast and quiet for all its ungainliness. Alex presses his thumbs into his eye sockets in an attempt to rub away the sharp pains from Hodge's voice. When he opens his eyes, he sees mutates in the incineration facility. They wear skintight suits that can't be removed, in bright ugly colors, their faces smooth and expressionless like wax.
One mutate opens the back hatch of their transport and they both pick up shovels, sticking them into the container. When the shovels are withdrawn, they are swirling with tendrils of color, wisps of red and black, yellow and brown, other colors not so usual. Purples and blues and pinks and shocks of white. Hair, swatches and thick curls of it, short snips of it, shovel after shovel full of it going into the incinerator. The smell is instant and overwhelming.
Alex sees one shovel trailing long, green tendrils, and turns away.
His nose bleeds endlessly that night, hot thin streaks of it streaming down into his mouth, over his chin, sliding between his fingers when he puts them to his face. He tries to staunch the flow, tries to apply pressure to the bridge of his nose, tries putting ice on his forehead and face, and none of it works.
After a while, Alex stops trying and sits up on his bunk in the dark, letting blood drip from his chin, slip down his throat and soak into his shirt. His fingers are dry, and stiff, and he feels the blood under his nails and wishes he had even nightmares about that past, because that at least would be something.
In the morning, he will begin again.