William Stryker stood outside his trailer and watched the sun die slowly, as it did every night, and he was unmoved. Pale gold, rose, and lilac melted into apricot, raspberry, and lavender, and those shades intensified into orange, red, and amethyst, eventually cooling into the silvered, spangled blue of dusk.
He was not the man he had been before: before he had to flee Alkali Lake, before Charles Xavier had spotted the tell-tale signs of abuse on Magneto—the pin-prick pupils of his eyes, the bruises, the disorientation—and called for an investigation.
Then of course Magneto had somehow gotten hold of some metal, and the next thing he knew, his carefully planned invasion of Xavier's school was a messy failure and the president went down and took Stryker with him.
It wasn't his fault. It was Xavier's fault. Xavier and Magneto's. Damn them. Mutants were only loyal to each other.
The mug of coffee in his hand likewise cooled, a film of milk congealing on its surface, while he stood there. He didn't care for his new living conditions; even if his trailer was top-of-the-line, it was a trailer, and the ghosts of his youth whispered 'Poor white trash' at him whenever he returned to it. His son now lived at the new laboratories, where attendants fed and bathed him and changed his diapers, which was good, as there was no way in hell his father was going to do that for him, and although Yumiko Oyama kept the trailer as neat and clean as a man could ask for, there was one thing she couldn't do, and that was cook right.
She was a Jap, and Jap cooking was all that she knew: clear broths with noodles and scraps of pork floating in it, rice, vegetables, and tofu. He had lost weight since he had to flee Alkali Lake; folds of deflated skin hung off him unappealingly. If this kept up, he would have to get it surgically removed, because sooner or later, it would get infected.
Behind him, his perfect deadly assassin said a single word, "Dinner," and he finally moved, pouring the stale coffee out into the Arizona dust before turning and going inside.
Tonight it was fried chicken—or her version of it. Chicken tempura. It was a shame she was a Jap and not a little ol' Negro gal who grew up with the kind of cooking his mouth watered for: red-eye gravy, pecan pie, and grits. But he just had to live with it. And her.
Not that he lived with her. Not in the Biblical sense. She slept in a sleeping bag on the floor, a little better than a dog, even though the dog would deserve it more than she did, mutant that she was. Sleeping with her would have been a hideous betrayal of the memory of his dead wife—and of his own fundamental humanity. Even if she did look and feel and smell enough like a real woman, it would be worse than bestiality.
He sat, and she served him. Then she took her own portion, and knelt on the floor. Sometimes, when she was due for another dose of his son's wonder drug, the fluids extracted from his spinal column, there was a look in her eyes which suggested that she didn't like being his unpaid drudge and not only scrubbing his toilet, but emptying the septic tank when it needed it, but wasn't serving men part of her culture? She should be used to it.
However unsatisfactory his living conditions were, his work was thriving. He had his third of the stock of Marine StarCare to draw on, providing funding for a laboratory and assistants—and the health-care corporation itself was useful for more than money. It provided data…
He was close to finding his blocker—the formula which would prevent the birth of another mutant to normal parents. So close…
In his studies of mutants, he had noticed something—there weren't any mutant families out there where both parents were mutants, and their children were mutants. God would not allow it; either the children were entirely normal or they were dead—at birth or shortly after. Congenital defects, chromosomal abnormalities. Stillbirths. When there were children, at any rate. Most mutant pairings were sterile.
Like mules, the product of a horse and a donkey. The chromosomes were too abnormal.
Now that he had those mutant mice from Worthington Laboratories to work with, he understood why: their gametes did not recognize one another. No conception occurred, or when it did, the mutants were too mutated to live, and the others were normal.
Except for that one female mouse, and her offspring…His mind shied away from that, because it troubled him. One female mouse, just as much a mutant as any other, had born only mutants, and they had all lived. More, their offspring were also all mutants, and they too, lived, breeding as normally as any other mice.
When he realized what that meant, he not only killed the entire genetic line, he incinerated them. Alive.
He hadn't known mice could scream, before that.
Sometimes he woke in the middle of the night in a cold sweat, because he dreamed that somewhere out there in the world was a mutant woman who was like that mother mouse, whose genes adapted to breed true and healthy mutants. He imagined her as a second Lilith, the mother of monsters, the first, perverted wife of Adam, who did not know her place. He dreamed of her pregnant with a doubly mutant child, her blood nourishing it, her lungs breathing life into it, and he woke.
It was nonsense, really. Nothing for him to be afraid of. One individual wouldn't, couldn't make that much of a difference. Mutantkind would die out once he had perfected his formula, and if she did exist, her children could be hunted down and exterminated as easily as mice.
He kicked Oyama. "This chicken tastes like crap." She said nothing, although her meal was now spread out all over the floor. With her healing powers, the bruise made by the toe of his shoe would fade within moments from her skin.
The bruise on her soul would last until he died, or until she did.
A/N: Hey, any ideas on how I can perk up my story summary, or is it perfect as it is?
