At the same time, but many miles away, Logan had finally caught up with the tracking signal in the car Pyro had taken. They were now well off the beaten track. Logan didn't know the area at all; he'd never had any reason to be here, and he wondered why Pyro had come this way. Where was he going? Was he bound for some secret hideaway, to hide from the X-Men, to lurk and plot his next move? Logan reckoned he wouldn't have been surprised if Pyro had any number of undisclosed hiding places all over the country.
Well, it wouldn't matter for much longer. It was almost over. The tracking signal had stopped moving some time ago, so the car was stationary. Either Pyro had stopped somewhere, or he was on foot. Either way, all Logan would need to do was sniff the bastard out. If it came down to a fight, which he sincerely hoped it would, Pyro wouldn't stand a chance.
He could see the car now. Parked up ahead, just off the side of the dirt track, half-hidden by a large rock. Pyro had to be somewhere around. There couldn't be anywhere around here he could have gone. If he did have some hideout, Logan knew it would only be a matter of time before he found it.
"Where are you, you son of a bitch?" he muttered, riding towards the stationary car.
His question was answered almost immediately as a sudden jet of flame shot through the air towards him. Logan instinctively swerved the bike to avoid it, but he swerved too far and the vehicle skidded across the ground, dragging him with it. He felt his clothes and skin tearing on the rough ground, and he gritted his teeth against the pain until the bike stopped sliding. Eventually it smashed into a rock; he pushed it away from him, and waited until his healing power mended the injuries he'd suffered. Where was Pyro? There was no sign of him. The fire had come out of nowhere. He hadn't even noticed which direction it had come from.
He sniffed the air. No good. The overpowering scent was the burning wreckage of his bike. Correction: Scott's bike. Still slightly stunned by the crash, it was a good few seconds before the obvious occurred to him.
"Oh man, put the fire out!" he gasped to himself. "I can't give that bastard even more fire to play with."
Grabbing the fire extinguisher from the back of the vehicle, he quickly doused the flames.
"Logan! What the hell are you doing here?"
Too late. He turned to see Pyro standing ten yards away from him. Wasting no time, he extended his claws and charged. Pyro reacted instantly, a jet of flame shooting from his lighter and forming a protective ring around him.
"That won't stop me and you know it," Logan snarled.
He continued his charge, bursting right through the circle of flame and swiping his claws towards the other man. Pyro directed another stream of fire, this one at the ground where he was standing, using the jet propulsion to lift himself from the ground and somersault over Logan's head.
"What are you going to do when the lighter fluid runs out?" Logan mocked him.
"I dunno, break open your bike's gas tank?" Pyro retorted.
They circled around each other, each waiting for the opportune moment. Logan quickly realised something that the other man was trying hard to conceal: Pyro was limping. When had he gotten injured?
"This ends here," Logan spat. "You and me, one on one. Nobody will get in our way. Nobody else knows where we are."
"You don't want to do this, Logan."
"Oh, come on – do you really think you can take me?"
"If I have to. What the hell is your problem?"
Losing his patience, Logan yelled, "Don't play innocent with me, you son of a bitch! I've seen the recording! I've seen what happened! I know exactly what you did!"
"What?" Pyro snapped. "Are you mad at me because I burned down part of your precious school?"
"Don't say another word, you murdering bastard! I'm here because you killed two people who never did you a moment's harm in your life!"
"Logan, you're delusional! Shut the hell up and get out of my sight!"
"Enough! I should have done this three years ago!"
Logan charged again, both sets of claws out and aimed directly at Pyro's throat. Pyro drew another circle of flame around himself, higher and hotter than the last one, and Logan knew better than to plough straight through it this time. He ducked to the ground and rolled underneath, where the fire was weakest, ignoring the burns which he suffered, knowing his healing would fix them quickly enough. He'd taken Pyro by surprise, and he kicked out at the flamer's legs, knocking him to the ground. Logan was on him in an instant, forcing the lighter from his grip, and pinning him to the ground, one claw on either side of Pyro's throat. The middle claw extended until it was just touching his neck.
"I could kill you now," he snarled. "But why make it quick? Why not make it agonising and slow like you made it for Melody and her little girl?"
Pyro's eyes widened and he snarled, "What the hell are you talking about, you delusional, sanctimonious asshole? I didn't – "
"Shut up! Not one more word! There isn't anything you could possibly say that will stop me from killing you!"
"Logan, you really are a stupid bastard! I don't give a damn whether you listen to me or not – but will you at least listen to her?"
"Huh?"
Pyro's eyes were looking behind him. That was where Logan heard a third voice coming from; a worried, female voice that cried, "Pyro! Hey, what are you doing? Get off him!"
Melody pushed Logan to one side and knelt beside Pyro, "Hey, are you all right?"
"I'll live – no thanks to our friend here," Pyro gasped, struggling into a sitting position.
Little Athena ran up to them and pointed to Logan, "Mommy, why is the wolf-man here?"
"Melody – what the hell is going on?" Logan cried.
"Oh, work it out," Pyro snapped. "Try using that mass of unthinking muscle that's lodged between your ears for once."
"Sshh," Melody hushed him. "Mr Logan, it's not what you think. I'll try to explain what happened…"
She recounted the events as she remembered them. She had grabbed hold of Athena just as the four attackers started advancing towards her once more, and Pyro summoned the fireball from his cigarette lighter. When he aimed it at Melody, she had genuinely believed her last moment had come. She had shut her eyes and prepared to die. But then seconds had passed, and she wasn't dead; in fact, she wasn't even burning. She had opened her eyes, to see the ring of fire around her and Athena – not harming them, but protecting them. Then she had seen, through the flames, Pyro tackling the four invaders, being impaled in the leg by a metal spike, but fighting on regardless, driving the four of them away with an enormous wall of flame, screaming in agony as he pulled the spike from his leg, limping after the attackers to finally force them from the building, but never once dropping his concentration or losing control of the ring of flame that protected Melody and her daughter from harm.
"Then we had to run for it," she finished. "We didn't know when those guys would be back, and with Pyro injured, we just wanted to get to safety. We looked for that girl called Amnesia but we couldn't find her anywhere."
Logan looked at Pyro, "Why? Huh? Tell me why."
"Why I risked my life to save them? Gee, I dunno, maybe it's because you people are so completely incompetent that you regularly leave defenceless women and children alone when you're supposed to be protecting them."
"Uh huh. Since when do you care about human lives?"
"OK, number one, little kid here is a mutant, not a human. Number two, these are the only blood relatives my adopted daughter has in the entire world. Two things you might have taken into account before you jumped to your usual automatic conclusion that I'm out to kill the entire world."
For a moment neither man said anything, both continuing to glare at each other, but both of them realising the other was not an immediate threat. Logan retracted his claws. Pyro grabbed his lighter and put it away.
"So who were those guys who attacked?" Logan demanded. "If they don't work for you, who do they work for?"
"How the hell should I know?"
"At least one of them recognised you," said Melody. "Why did he call you 'Boss'?"
"Because he used to work for me," Pyro sighed. "A long, long time ago. Look, I don't have time to explain right now. Logan – where's Gemini? Is she safe?"
"Far as I know, she's still at the conference centre with the others."
"I want to go there now. If those guys came to the school, they'll go after your friends at the conference centre too."
Melody shook her head, "You shouldn't go anywhere until your leg is healed."
Something occurred to Logan, "Hey, wait a minute, if you're so innocent, why did you start attacking me as soon as I arrived?"
"I didn't know it was you. I thought it was the guys we were running from. Then when I realised it was you, I stopped attacking. If you recall."
"Perhaps so," Logan conceded. "Anyway, we can't hang around here. Something tells me if we head for the conference centre now, it'll be too late. Let's go to the school."
Melody nodded, "OK. Pyro, get in the car. I'll drive. Come on, Athena, time to go."
The little girl looked up from where she'd been kicking some wild flowers, and hurried after her mother.
Vertigo was glad to be able to stop driving at last. He had lost track of how long it had been since they'd left the conference centre, or how many miles they had travelled. They had arrived at the location Pyro had made him memorise over four years ago, one of the Brotherhood's old safe-houses, one which Vertigo himself had never actually been to before.
It wasn't visible from the road. Pyro had made sure of that. Vertigo parked the car out of sight behind some trees, then led the kids towards a small, squat building hidden behind a large rock formation. The door required a pass-code to be entered in a numeric keypad, a pass-code Pyro had forced him to burn deep into his memory. He typed it in without pausing, making a mental note to tell Accel what it was later. He didn't want all of the kids running in and out all the time, but it would probably be a good idea for at least one other person to know, and she was the oldest.
"OK," he said as they entered the safe-house. "For now I just want you to sit down and chill out. I don't know how long we'll be here for, but there are enough beds for all of us, and plenty of food. Everything will be fine and we'll be back at the school in no time."
With that said, he left the kids to explore, and sank down into a chair by the window and tried to think what to do next. He'd done what the X-Men would have wanted. He'd taken the children to safety. Whoever these attackers were, they wouldn't be able to find the safe-house unless someone told them where it was. And he was fairly confident Pyro could be trusted with that information.
The only thing he could really do, other than sit and wait, was try to contact Pyro, or the X-Men, and find out what the hell was going on, and what he should do next. Not that he particularly wanted to look to Cyclops for orders, but for the children's sake he was prepared to go along with what the X-Men thought was best for the youngsters. The little communication device that was still attached to his ear – he'd forgotten to remove it – would be no use. It was short range only. But he had a vague recollection that during the mission briefing from Shapeshifter – most of which Vertigo hadn't particularly listened to – there had been mention of an emergency long-range communication device hidden somewhere in the X-Men uniform he was still wearing. He'd hated putting the stupid uniform on and he still hated it, but he had to admit the stuff in the pockets was coming in handy.
Shrieking laughter suddenly erupted from wherever the children were. He was later to find out that the two boys had discovered an enormous spider in a dark corner somewhere in the building, and had flung it at one of the girls, whereupon much screaming had ensued. For now he tried to tune out the sound and concentrate on searching his uniform for any signs of a long range communicator. Maybe he should have paid more attention in the briefing, he thought sarcastically. The kids were still screaming and laughing and messing around, and it was really starting to get on his nerves. He was this close to just marching over there and yelling at them to keep quiet for just ten seconds. But then, he knew they'd been cooped up in the car for however long without really complaining, and all of them had been terrified for their lives earlier. He knew they needed a chance to run around and burn their energy and get rid of their adrenaline. They'd tire themselves out eventually.
It took a couple of hours, but they eventually did. The novelty of being in a new place had finally worn off, and they'd soon realised there was actually very little to do in the safe-house. It was designed as an emergency stop-over, not a funhouse, he would later point out, but that didn't make any of them feel any better. However, it was about then that he finally figured out where his emergency communicator was.
"Well, of course you keep it in the bottom of your left boot," he muttered sarcastically, cursing the X-Men. "That's the first place any sane person would try…"
He tried calling Pyro, and got no response. He tried calling the school, and got no response. He vaguely remembered the frequencies of one or two of the X-Men's personal communicators, and called those, and got no response. Great. Absolutely damned fantastic. He had no idea how to get hold of anyone or what to do next.
Time passed as he continued to sit and stare out of the window, still harbouring lingering worries that he hadn't been able to throw off the pursuit, that somebody somewhere might still have been keeping track of them, and might even now be approaching the safe house. Eventually he told himself to knock it off, and went to find some food. The kids apparently hadn't eaten much, as very little was missing.
The house was silent and dark, an indication that the children had finally given into tiredness and boredom, and gone to bed of their own accord. He hadn't given them any sleeping arrangements, but there were three rooms with beds, and he assumed the boys were in one and the girls in another. If that wasn't the case, he really didn't care. As far as he was concerned they were too young for gender separation to matter. If they all wanted to be in one room to feel safer, he couldn't care less. He went to the bedroom nearest the front door and found it empty. Sinking down on one of the beds, he lay flat and stared at the ceiling in the darkness. What should he do next? How long was it safe to stay here? What should he do if something had happened to the X-Men and none of them could be reached? Where should he take the children?
There came a gentle knock on the bedroom door.
"Come in," he said.
Accel entered the room. She sat down beside him on the bed.
"What's up?" he asked. "I thought you guys had all gone to bed."
"The others have," she said. "I just wanted to know what we're doing next. Thanks for getting us here safe, by the way, I meant to say that earlier. But what do we do now?"
He shrugged, "Now we wait until we hear from Pyro or from the school."
"Can't we do anything?"
"Like what?"
"Like go after the bad guys."
Vertigo looked at her, "Don't be stupid, Accel. You saw how dangerous that guy was."
"You looked as if you could handle him."
"Yeah, maybe, but that's not the only thing I've got to worry about. I've got to keep looking after you guys as well, haven't I?"
"Hey, I can look after myself," she said, folding her arms and looking defiant.
"What about the others?"
She shrugged. Silence fell between them.
"Can I sleep there?" she said eventually, pointing to the other bed in the room.
"What's wrong with your own room?"
"There are only two beds, and Phoebe and Bibi are already asleep in them. And I'm not going in with the boys!"
"Fine. Whatever. Just don't snore."
She climbed into the bed and pulled the covers up to her chin. Then she turned and called across the darkened room, "Girls don't snore!"
"I can assure you, they do."
"How would you know?" she asked. "You've never slept with a girl – have you?"
"Maybe I have, maybe I haven't. Go to sleep."
She turned over and faced the wall, and Vertigo put his head back on the pillow and closed his eyes. Sleep normally came to him within seconds, whenever he wanted it to. He was used to being able to close his eyes and cat-nap at any time, to make sure he was fresh and rested for whatever was planned. But tonight…tonight it was different. Try as he might, he just couldn't relax. Obviously the fact that he had the kids' safety to worry about wasn't helping. As much as he tried to convince himself that the safe-house was – well, safe – he still wasn't comfortable with going to sleep and leaving the children vulnerable to unexpected attack.
He stared at the ceiling and tried to straighten out things in his mind. Why did he even care? They weren't his children. They were the X-Men's junior students. They would only grow up to be brainwashed into believing Xavier's stupid fantasies about co-existing with humans. There would come a time when they were no longer innocent children, but powerful young adults who were fully indoctrinated into the X-Men's lies. Should he allow that to happen? Was that any better, or less dangerous, than the threats they were facing now?
Vertigo sighed. Well, what was the alternative? How could he stop the X-Men from brainwashing the kids? He was in no position to take care of them and teach them. Pyro might have been able to, but he'd given up. Worthless coward that he was. Was there anybody else? Magneto was dead. Mystique had worked with the X-Men to defeat Foolkiller, and as far as Vertigo knew, she too had no interest in carrying on the fight any more. Was it really just him? Was he really the only one left who thought the Brotherhood's ideals were worth something? Of those he'd once called Brothers and Sisters, were they all now either turned traitor or dead? He ran through their names in his mind. There was nobody left who he thought it worth contacting to try and restart the old order of things.
So what did that mean for him? Should he give it up too? Was it really that important to carry on the fight? Why had he even cared in the first place? It was a question he'd asked himself many times over the past few years, and it was a question he always had the answer ready for. Vertigo had his own reasons for wanting to eradicate humanity and replace it with mutantkind. Nobody else knew what they were. He'd never told Pyro, and he'd never had any friends close enough to share it with. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath as his mind went back to that one fateful day, seven years ago now, when his mother had died.
Accel mumbled something and turned over in her sleep. Vertigo was jerked out of his memories, and back to the situation at hand. He felt so restless. Actually, he felt the same way Accel did. He didn't want to be sitting here doing nothing, any more than she did. But then, it was easy for her to say that. She wasn't responsible for the safety of the others. He looked over at Accel, her dark hair splayed across her pillow, her small body rising and falling slowly. It was easy for her to go to sleep, contented in the knowledge that somebody older was there to make all the decisions and look after the younger ones. Vertigo had always hated responsibility. Being in charge of missions had never bothered him, provided the others present could take care of themselves and didn't expect him to do it for them. He really didn't much like having to look out for the safety of others.
But was there really any need for him to be here? It was a safe-house. The kids were safe here, weren't they? Was there any need for him to stay and watch over them? What good was it going to do? Couldn't he just – go? Couldn't he just leave them here? There was enough food to keep the kids going until Pyro or Cassandra or whoever thought to look for them here. Propping himself up on one elbow, Vertigo began to seriously consider the possibility. Sure, he wanted the kids to be safe. And here they were. Safe. He'd done his job and kept them from harm. Now he was free from that responsibility and could go do something else.
But what? He didn't want to go back to the school. If nobody else was interested in restarting the Brotherhood, then he didn't care about that either. He just wanted the X-Men to leave him the hell alone. Wait a minute. He sat upright in bed as something occurred to him. Then he silently slid out of bed and hurried out of the room.
He'd suddenly remembered something Pyro had told him. All of the safe-houses had a hidden compartment where a special cash card was stored, one that gave access to an emergency bank account Magneto had set up years ago for times of crisis. Now that nobody was left in the Brotherhood, that money was lying untouched in an account that, as far as Vertigo knew, nobody else had access to. He rushed to where he knew the secret compartment would be hidden, and began rifling through its contents. Within moments he had what he was looking for in his hand.
This was it. His ticket to a new life. No more dossing around at the X-Men's school, shirking responsibilities and blagging his way to another year of doing nothing while getting to stay for free. No more being brainwashed by their ridiculous notions of peace with the humans, or of being forced to participate in these stupid missions. No more having to spend time with the lame-ass Chronos, the spaced-out Atlas, or worst of all the unbearably arrogant, self-righteous, self-obsessed Gemini.
Glancing back through the doorway at the sleeping Accel, he tried to think of a good reason not to just walk out and go his own way. Nothing came to mind. It wasn't like he was abandoning the children in the middle of a warzone. They were as safe here as anywhere else he could take them. He could just get into the car, and then – hell, why not just drive? He had access to the money still sitting in what had been the Brotherhood's emergency cash supply. He had no reason to go back to the X-Men. They wanted to toss him out and make him get a job. He had no friends there he would miss, and plenty of people he never wanted to see again. Why not just head out and make his own way in the world?
And the kids? his conscience tried to rally.
They'd be fine. Pyro would find them and take them back to the school. Or Cassandra would, or that pretentious little slut Gemini. Or someone would, anyway. Yeah. Somebody would. Whatever. He didn't know who or when, but he didn't really care. Not his kids. Not his problem. Walking silently across the room, he eased open the front door, and headed for the car. Behind him, five sleeping children had no idea they were now alone.