Back again with another update. Firstly, I want to say a big thank you anyone who have fav'ed or followed. You are so great! As this is being published, there has been over 200 views! Wicked! I'm really pleased with the response rate, although I would like a couple of reviews. But, hey, not complaining. Anyway, please read, review and enjoy!
And I find it kinda funny, I find it kinda sad
The dreams in which I'm dying are the best I've ever had
I find it hard to tell you, I find it hard to take
When people run in circles it's a very very
Mad world
- Mad World, Tears for Fears, The Hurting
Chapter Three
Lyndsey giggled as she watched Alex and Sean throwing chair and other pieces of furniture at Darwin, trying to see if anything could break through his skin. Each time something made contact with Darwin's skin, however, his skin turn to rock and appeared unbreakable.
Hank was hanging from the ceiling light by his feet, thanks to his mutation. He hand been like that for more than an hour, trying to see how long he could hold on for. The whole room was trashed, the product of seven mutant teenagers running wild. Raven stood on the overturned couch cushions dancing away, drink in hand. Lyndsey was only thankful it was cola, for Raven and alcohol must cause more mayhem than there already was. Angel hovered near to Raven, dancing mid-air to the music coming from the jukebox.
Lyndsey, however, was not partying like the rest of the young mutants. Not because she was 'boring' as some might say, but because she was unsure on how to party. For a long time, it and only been her and Aiden, so she had to grow up quickly. So, instead of partying with the other teenagers, she sat on the couch and observed their antics, flicking through the pages of Raven's 'Cosmo' magazine. Every so often, her eyes flickered down to her grey backpack that sat by her feet, in reassurance that is was there. She didn't have much so most of her belongings had fit in to the bag. Not that any of her belongings were valuable, they were more sentimental than anything. Mostly what she had managed to grab before…
She shook her head out of her thoughts. She couldn't think about it. They would want her to move on. But the more she tried to not think about it, the more she did.
The anniversary was coming up. Five years in only a few weeks. It seemed like millenniums, time had passed so slowly. Now longer was she that scared twelve-year-old, but a fully grown seventeen year old who had a fourteen year old to look after and some unspecified war to fight in against some sociopathic mutant.
"Come on, Lyndsey!" Raven said, picking up her hand. "Let loose!"
Lyndsey laughed but got up and joined Raven in her dance on the sofa. Raven grinned and danced away as Lyndsey began to dance too. How long had it been since she had danced? It felt good to relax, spin and sway her body around letting all the tension loose. Unfortunately for her, she had picked the worse time too.
"What are you doing?!" The angry (and surprisingly loud) voice of Moria McTaggert cut across the room like a knife.
Almost immediately, everyone had stopped dead in their tracks, facing the woman who stood outside the broken window angrily. Someone turned the music off. Alex put the chair back down. Raven and Lyndsey stepped off the couch while Hank jumped back to the ground, as did Angel. Darwin turned back to skin and bones instead of rock. All of the teenaged mutants stood there, like toddlers being told off. Erik and Charles materialised out of nowhere, flanking Moria with disgraced looks.
"Who destroyed the statue?" Moria demanded, looking back at the sliced-in-half statue. Alex looked down in shame.
"It was Alex," Hank said quickly. He clearly was a bad liar and could not keep that big of a secret. Alex shot him an annoyed look but looked back at the floor, head hanging in shame.
"No, it's Havok! We have to call him Havok now, that's his codename!" Raven exclaimed, walking toward the shattered window pane. Lyndsey groaned internally. No, Raven, she thought, don't make it any worse than it already is. Despite Lyndsey's internal willing, Raven ploughed on.
"And we were thinking, you should be Professor X," She said, pointing at Charles. "And you should be Magneto!" Raven finished, pointing at Erik.
"Exceptional," Erik muttered dryly, shaking his head. He, along with Charles and Moria, were clearly disappointed with the young mutants, probably having just been trying to justify bring a bunch of teenagers in to a top-secret Government facility. Lyndsey felt dirty, Charles was trying to give her a new life and her she was, acting like a disgraceful hooligan. She thought her parents had raised her better than that. They would be ashamed if they saw her now.
Erik stalked off while Raven's previously proud expression faded. Charles stared at her for a little longer.
"I expect more from you," He said to her, disappointment clear in his voice. His eyes were heavy and a few tears of unhappiness whelmed in the corners. He too walked off, closely followed by Moria, leaving seven ashamed teenagers in their wake.
A few hours later, once the window had been repaired and the room tided up, the young mutants sat in near silence. The looks of the window repair men had already been enough to guilt them even further and what they were. That, and the fact they muttered under their breath how abnormal mutants where was enough to make nearly all the mutants want to punch them.
Raven and Angel sat on one sofa, Sean and Hank on the other, while Lyndsey and Darwin stood by Alex, who was playing pinball.
"Jesus, man, you are killing me," Darwin said as Alex score quickly increased.
"You're still doing better than me," Lyndsey mumbled. Her score had been so low, they all thought she was losing on purpose.
"Yeah. How are you so bad at pinball?" Darwin asked. Lyndsey shrugged and quickly replied;
"Guess you could say I haven't had a lot of time for playing pinball."
"Yeah, but even then, you can't have been that bad," Alex said, not looking up. He kept his eyes focused on the machine, grinning as his score increased.
"I haven't played pinball in a long time," Lyndsey sighed, walking over towards the sofa.
"And why's that?" Alex called, but Lyndsey pretended not to hear him. She didn't need anyone knowing about her private life. It was private for a reason.
Alex and Darwin returned to their game, Alex muttering something about having lots of free time. Lyndsey sat down next to Raven, who offered her a kind smile. Just as she did, two C.I.A agents walked past the window, dressed in the signature black suits.
"I didn't know the circus was in town," The first said, staring at the teenagers. The other laughed.
"Hey, come on, honey," The second said to Angel. "Give us a little..." The man then wiggled his body, trying to do a poor impression of Angel's mutation. Said girl simply glared at the two, but they were not put off.
"What about you, Sweet cheeks?" The first said, this time to Lyndsey. "You gonna do a bit of palm reading? See my future? Where's your crystal ball?"
Lyndsey reddened, a mix of humiliation, embarrassment and anger. She was used to being subjected to idiot's views on mutants, but it still got to her. She thought that wouldn't happen here, that they wouldn't be treated like second class citizens.
"No? Come on, let's see the foot," They this time said to Hank, who had gotten up, stony expression on his face, and began to walk towards the window. "There it is. Come on, Big Foot, let's go," Hank went to closed the curtain, which blocked the agents from view, but unfortunately not from hearing. "Hey. Hey, come on. Hey," The agents protested, but soon got bored and moved on.
Lyndsey smiled slightly at Hank, who nodded in understanding.
"They're just guys being stupid," Raven said soothingly, more to Angel as she looked more troubled by it.
"Guys being stupid, I can handle," Angel said, with a bit more force than was needed. "I've handled that my whole life. But I'd rather a bunch of guys stare at me with my clothes off than the way these ones stare at me."
"At us," Raven added.
"Yeah, we're a team," Lyndsey agreed, causing Angel to look up at the girl with small smile.
The five sat in silence, sipping at their drinks. After the incident, no one felt like speaking much. So, with the exception of the occasional noise of the pinball machine, the room was silent, until Raven spoke;
"How old are you, Lyndsey?" She asked.
"I'm seventeen, why?" Lyndsey answered.
"Ah, so you're the baby of the group?" Sean smirked.
"I guess so," She shrugged. They returned to silence, Raven playing about with Lyndsey's hair, experimenting with different styles. If felt strange, no one had done that for a long time. Her mind drifted back into her thoughts, to the time when her mother would plait her hair at night.
Her thoughts were interrupted by a muffled thudding noise from outside. At first, she thought she had imagined it, but from the others expressions, she clearly hadn't. Another followed, only this time it was louder.
"What was that?" Darwin asked as he and Alex moved towards the others. He went to open the window and right before he did, Lyndsey's blue eyes turned silver and she had a vision. Terrible images filled her mind and just as Darwin reached the window, she snapped out of the trance.
"No! Don't open the window!" She shouted, but Darwin already had.
"Why, what's wrong?" He asked, voice full of concern.
Lyndsey simply whimpered and turned away from the window, not wanting to see what was going to happen for a second time. The others looked at her in concern but looked back outside when they heard a scream.
"What is that?" Darwin said, looking at an object in the sky. It flew down, picking up momentum until it dropped on the ground with a sickening crack. Lyndsey buried her face in her palms, allowing some strong arms to wrap round her. She heard the cries of her friends as they saw what she had seen a minute earlier. A dead agent swimming in a pool of his own blood.
Alarms began to ring and large flood lights lit up the courtyard as more bodies dropped to the ground with sickening cracks. Lyndsey released herself from the arms of Alex, who had tried to shield her from the view. Living agents, all armed with guns, filled in the courtyard. One came straight up to the window.
"Get back!" He shouted. "Get back! Do not leave that room!"
A red man appeared in the middle of the courtyard, near to where the statue was. He held two, wicked looking blades and his tail had a sharp point on the end of it. All the agents had their backs to him, so the mutants screamed at him.
"Shoot! Shoot!" They all cried, pointing at him. He grinned wickedly before teleporting all around the courtyard, slashing down agents. The window shattered from the renegade bullets that hit it. Darwin and Alex pushed the others back, shielding them from the pieces of falling glass and shrapnel. From the other window, Lyndsey could see what looked like a tornado tear up the grounds, and Hank's machine, Cerebro. Lyndsey place a hand on Hank's arm, who watched as his work was destroyed.
"Stay here, my ass! Let's go!" Darwin said, leading the mutants through the thick metal doors into winding corridors. He went first, followed by Raven, Angel and Hank, Lyndsey and Alex at the back. Lyndsey had just reached the door when her had hand subconsciously went to her back. NO! Lyndsey darted back, under Alex's outstretched arms.
"What are you doing?!" She heard him yell but she ignored him. She couldn't leave without it. Her hands found her backpack and she tugged it onto her back. Alex materialised in front of her, angry, yet worried expression on his face.
"What are you doing?!" He repeated. "We have to get out of here!"
He grabbed her hand and dragged her into the corridor where the others were waiting.
"Why did you go back for that?" Alex demanded. "You could have been killed!"
"I couldn't leave without it," Lyndsey mumbled, hugging the backpack. The others noted her expression sad and reminisant. She looked like a child, who refused to let go of their favourite toy.
"Come on!" Darwin said, leading the group further down the corridor, the sound of bullets spurring him into action. Alex hovered near Lyndsey, who never once realised her grip of the backpack.
The end of the corridor was blocked by agents, some of whom seemed too shocked to see them out of the room.
"Get back!" One of them shouted.
"We can help! We can help!" All the mutants shouted, but the agents simply waved them back. The sound of gunfire and a fiery explosion drove both the mutants and the agents back down the corridor, towards the room where they had came.
Once back in the room, the mutants jumped round the destroyed wreckage of tables and chairs. Lyndsey smacked her face off of Sean's shoulder, who had skidded to a stop to watch as the tornado grew bigger and moved closer towards the building. A body smashed through the window, sliding towards the mutants. Raven and Angel both shrieked, tears falling down their faces. Darwin, Sean and Hank stood in front of the girls, Darwin's arms out wide in protection. Although they weren't crying, they did look disturbed by the body. Alex dragged Lyndsey back by her waist, away from the body. Usually, Lyndsey would have flipped if anyone did this, but under the circumstances, she felt reassured by the contact.
Alex too looked disturbed by the body. He looked down at Lyndsey, who, although upset, did not look too scared at the dead body in front of her. He made a mental note to ask her about it later.
"They're here for us," Lyndsey whimpered, burying her head in Alex's jacket. The others looked at her, then back at the windows. Images flashed before her eyes, things she didn't want to remember.
A little blonde haired girl lay on the floor, the crimson blood from her chest wound staining the floor a horrid colour. Lyndsey squeezed her eyes shut, trying to block out the image.
From the window that looked out on to the courtyard, the red-skinned man with the spiked tail walked into the room, smirking. A Spanish man appearing from where the tornado had ripped up the grounds, dusting dirt of his lapel with a smug look. Lyndsey gasped and ducked further behind Alex.
No, not him. Anyone but him. Her grip on Alex's shoulder tightened when more gunshots sounded from behind the metal doors, quickly followed by the shouts of CIA agents.
"Wait, wait! You want the mutants? They're right through that door! Just let us normal people go, we're not threat-" He was quickly cut off by a gunshot, which was followed by a blood-curdling scream.
The door opened and helmeted man walked through, proud smirk on his face. He was clean shaved, wearing a pressed black suit, like many of the CIA agents were. From the way he held himself, he was clearly the leader.
"Where's the telepath?"
"Not here," The red-skinned teleporter replied, studying the group of young mutants.
"Too bad," The man said, sounding slightly disappointed. "Oh well, at least I can take this silly thing of," He said, removing the helmet and handing it to the teleporter. "My name is Sebastian Shaw, and I'm not here to hurt you."
Lyndsey scoffed and apparently he heard. His gaze fell upon the girl and his smiled wickedly.
"Why, hello again, Lyndsey,"
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