Gifted

  He studied the array for a full minute, mentally charted a trajectory, and then launched himself into the air. He twisted and turned in midair as he fell, finding the gaps in the crossbeams, taking advantage of them. He landed silently on the floor in a crouch, realizing only belatedly that if the floor was pressure-sensitive, he was in trouble. But there was nothing, or at least nothing he could hear or detect.

  He exited the room. There might have been important and useful things in there, but he had no interest in them. He was focused with precision, as laser-like as the beams he had just eluded.

  Moving through the empty corridors, sticking to the shadows, he made it to Doctor Rao’s lab. There was a security keypad outside, but he’d prepared for that as well. He extracted a blank security card attached to an electronic reader and slid it into the slot in the keypad. Seconds later the code numbers appeared on its screen and he tapped them into the pad. The keypad beeped at him welcomingly, and the door slid open.

  Beast clambered upward, preferring to make his way across the ceiling in the darkened lab. His night vision was perfect. Even upside down, he was positive he’d be able to find what he was looking for. The only sound in the place was the soft clicking of his claws against the ceiling.

  And then another click. The sound of a light switch, which was all the warning he had before the room was flooded with illumination. He squinted against it, his eyes hurting from the abrupt change.

  “Doctor McCoy,” came a soft, accented, slightly mocking female voice.

  He looked down. She was standing there calmly, looking up at him.

  “Doctor Rao,” he replied. He dropped from the ceiling and landed on the floor. “It’s been a long time. Berlin, wasn’t it? The cloning seminar…?” He was endeavoring to sound casual. He knew perfectly well the last time they’d seen each other, and that she was aware of it as well.

  “I seem to recall you were far less…furry…back then. Much more—”

  “Human?” He shrugged. “Appearances can be deceiving, can’t they.”

  “Yes, they can,” she said. “If I may ask: what happened?”

  “An unfortunate experiment that tried to make me something other than what I was…and instead brought out my true nature. As I said, appearances…”

  “Can be deceiving, yes. For instance, there are armed guards waiting outside the door, packing enough gas guns to put Galactus to sleep. Did you really think you could break in here?”

  He was slightly annoyed by that, realizing there must have indeed been pressure alarms built into the floor. Apparently he’d been monitored all along. But he maintained an air of bravado. “Did you think I wouldn’t try?” He approached her, remaining in a defensive crouch. “You’ve thrown a bomb into the room, Doctor. People will die because of what you’ve done today.”

  “People will die? How can someone with the eyes of a cat be so blind? People have died. People are dying. You say people will die? I say innocent people will live. Will live decent, normal lives.”

  Beast was now standing upright. “Yes, I saw you trundling out your poster child. Nice piece of publicity Tildie’s buying you. Well played.”

  “I’m not playing, Doctor McCoy. There are people whose lives have been destroyed by unwanted mutation, and I will give my life to help them. Whatever you and your X-Men plan to do, I—”

  Then she stopped and, to the Beast’s surprise, laughed softly.

  “Do you find that funny?” he asked.

  She didn’t answer immediately. When she did, she said, “During our time in Berlin, did I ever tell you about Harish?”

  “Harish? No, the name doesn’t ring a bell.”

  “He was my best friend when I was a child in India, in a small village you’ve never heard of. The sweetest boy. He was an artist. He was always sketching, always drawing. Still lifes. People. Me.”

  “Are we about to get to the part where you posed naked for him wearing only the Heart of the Ocean? Because if so—”

  “And then one morning,” she continued as if he hadn’t spoken, “shortly after he’d turned fourteen, his parents ran screaming from their small house, which was barely more than four metal walls held together through sheer willpower. Their son, they screamed, had turned into a monster. Overnight he had developed horns and a green hue to his face. Can you guess what happened next?”

  He didn’t have to. She told him anyway.

  “They dragged him out into the street, which was little more than a dirt road, and declared that a demon had wandered into our midst. And in their fear and terror, they beat him, Doctor McCoy. They beat him to death in front of my eyes, and I stood there and did nothing because there were so many of them and I was just one girl. But there was more to it than that. I was afraid that if I acted on his behalf, they’d turn on me as well. So I stood there, a prisoner of my helplessness and cowardice, and Harish was soon nothing but a bloodied pulp on the ground. Even his parents joined in. Even his parents. He…”

  Her eyes misted a moment, and then she reached deeply into herself to find the words she needed. “Never again. Never again am I going to do nothing to help poor, tortured people like Harish when I have the ability to—”

  “Kavita,” he said, dropping the honorific, his voice soft. “Stop.” She did so. “I’m not here to discuss the ethics of your ‘mutant cure.’ And I’m not here to destroy it. I just…want to know if it works.”

  She regarded him with open curiosity. “I…was not expecting you to say that, honestly. But in retrospect, I suppose I should not be surprised. All things considered…”

  “All things, yes.” He nodded toward the door. “There aren’t really men with guns standing outside, are there? I’d have heard them.”

  “No, there aren’t. I was bluffing. How’d I do?”

  “You were brilliant. I was completely taken in.”

  “No, you weren’t. Wait here, please.”

  He did as she requested. She disappeared into an adjoining room that he could only assume was another lab. It was entirely possible that she was genuinely summoning security, but for some reason he had a feeling she wasn’t going to do that. Then again, he’d been wrong before. He hoped this would not be one of those instances.

  A long minute passed, and then Kavita Rao reemerged. She was holding a small metal box. She walked up to the Beast and opened it so he could see the contents. It was a test tube, filled with a milky liquid, nestled in a cushion of foam rubber.

  “Do what you want with it,” she said. She closed the box and flipped shut a small latch.

  “What’s the catch?”

  “There’s no catch. I know you, Henry. You tend to get what you want. It either happens now, simply, without anyone getting hurt. Or it happens later after a lot of people get hurt, mostly Benetech employees just trying to do their jobs. I’d rather just cut to the chase, as it were.”

  She handed it to him. For just a moment her finger brushed against his. A small jolt seemed to jump between them, and then he took the sample of the cure securely in his large hands. “Thank you,” he said.

  “Not a problem. I assume I can count on your discretion? It’s only a single sample, but Benetech considers it proprietary material.”

  “If you’re asking whether I’d turn around and give it to another think tank and let them horn in on your discovery, don’t concern yourself. The last thing I want to do is facilitate people making more of it.”

  “Then that’s that. I assume you can see yourself out.”

  “Absolutely.”

  She turned and walked away from him, and then stopped. Her shoulders squared, she said quietly, “There’s been no one since you, Henry. No one even came close.”

  And then she walked out the door.

  “YOU did what? Are you insane?”

  Tildie was sleeping soundly. A simple enough activity for normal people, which Tildie now blessedly was.

  A far more abnormal individual loomed over her, filled with fury, watching her from insid
e the observation room that oversaw the entirety of her world. His head was visibly scarred from being lit on fire by a dragon, and his right eye was swollen shut.

  “The casual observer,” said Kavita Rao calmly, “would perhaps not consider me the unbalanced one.”

  “You gave the X-Men the serum.”

  “I gave an old colleague a sample.”

  “Where is he?” Ord snarled. “I want to have a consult with him.”

  “Long gone. Do you think I’d mention it to you if there were the slightest chance you could turn this into an excuse for a brawl? Besides,” and she shrugged, “they were bound to get hold of it sooner or later.”

  Ord didn’t seem impressed by her logic. “You know what the X-Men are to me.”

  “Besides an excuse to go around behaving like a super villain? I saw your ‘diversion’ on the news. Mercenaries. Hired thugs in a room full of innocent people. It’s inexcusable.”

  “You,” said Ord, stabbing a finger at her, “should show respect, Earthspawn. Without my technologies, you would have no cure.”

  “The technologies are of your people. Your own contributions have been a great deal more…ambiguous.”

  “My ‘contribution’ is yet to come. In the meantime, the mutants will pay for what they did to my face.”

  Yes, because you were such a hot commodity on date nights before that happened. “The dragon did it to your face,” she corrected him. “The dragon isn’t a mutant. He’s an alien, like you. Try to get it straight.” Ord glowered at her with his one visible eye. “Your anger is a liability. You should keep it in check.”

  Then an armored hand clamped down on her shoulder, jolting her. “One day, Doctor Rao, you will see my anger.”

  She fought a wave of nausea that threatened to incapacitate her. His touch was vile. Part of her wanted to scream for Henry to return and stop this creature from ever laying a hand on her again. But she’d been speaking the truth when she’d said Henry was long gone.

  She pulled her shoulder away from Ord. He could have held on to it, but instead he released it, apparently feeling he’d proven his point. “You are a pawn, my esteemed Doctor Rao,” he said, “in a grand scheme. You could not comprehend its scope.”

  “Then I won’t try,” she said carelessly. She walked over to the observation window and looked down upon Tildie, sleeping, devoid of nightmares. “I have more important concerns.”

  TWELVE

  EDWARD Tancredi didn’t know he was going to punch Jay Guthrie in the face until he did it.

  Jay was in the den, watching the News at Noon. Of course, the news people were talking about the cure.

  Jay was a fairly quiet individual, the same as Edward. He tended to keep to himself and seemed a bit uncomfortable with people. His hair was a disarrayed mass of red, and on his back he sported huge reddish-brown wings that he kept enfolded around his upper body when he was sitting. The wings, and the power of flight they provided him, prompted his code name of “Icarus.” They all had code names. Edward’s was “Wing,” which somehow seemed more appropriate to Jay’s look than his own. Indeed, Hisako had suggested that Edward change his code name to “Float,” but he’d disagreed, convinced he’d be subjected to endless ice-cream jokes.

  Jay glanced up at him and said, “Eddie, Eddie, Eddie Tancredi,” which prompted Edward to think he might as well have gone with “Float” after all, if people were going to find something related to his name to kid him about. Jay nodded toward the TV. “Check it out.”

  Edward walked in and saw, on the screen, footage of a long line of mutants standing outside the Benetech labs. Crowd-control barricades had been set up, forming the mutants into lines, the most massive lines Edward had seen since the last time he’d attended the San Diego Comic-Con. Some of the mutants looked relatively “normal.” The others had their mutations on the outside, an array of people with scaled skin, a walrus face, bodies of various colors. A rainbow coalition.

  The newscaster was saying, “Hundreds of alleged mutants are lined up outside the Benetech labs demanding this ‘cure,’ with more showing up every hour. A Benetech spokesman says that with the proposal to expedite the FDA approvals stalled in committee due to opposition from the formidable Senator Kelly, it will be weeks before they can even begin a federal approval process for the serum…”

  Edward watched the way Jay was staring at the television. He saw a longing in Jay’s face that made his gut twist in disgust. He picked up the remote and shut it off, causing Jay to snap his head around and look at him in irritation. “Dude, what the hell…?”

  “You’re going to do it, aren’t you?”

  “I haven’t even thought about it…”

  “Yeah, you have. I can tell.”

  “What are you, psychic now, too?” Jay got up from the chair and started to walk out, but Edward stepped in front of him. “Come on, dude, move…”

  “Be honest,” said Edward challengingly.

  Jay was about to brush him aside again, but then he stopped and looked defiantly at the shorter Edward. “Okay, fine. I’ve been thinking about it. Okay? I’ve been thinking about nothing but.”

  “And you’d give up this?” Edward began to float, the simplest manifestation of his abilities. “You’d give up this…all this…”

  “No, but maybe I’d give up all this,” and he extended his wings, knocking over an empty bottle of soda. “You think this is what I wanted from my life? I had it all planned, man. I was gonna be in a band. I wanted singing to be my life. When I begged my mother to get me guitar lessons at age six—when I was practicing until my fingers bled—do you really think I was planning to sprout wings and have my life go completely off track?”

  “It didn’t go off track! This is the track, and you’re having the ride of your life.”

  “Says you! The way it is now, the only way I get to be a famous singer is in some alternate universe where there’s no more mutants. Instead I’m stuck in this one, and it sucks! I’ll probably wind up dead before I’m twenty!”

  “I just…” Edward shook his head. “I can’t believe you’re going to turn into one of those lemmings, sending the wrong message…”

  “What’s the ‘wrong message?’ What the hell are you talking ab—”

  “That it’s okay! That it’s okay to just…just stick a needle in someone’s arm and make them into something they’re not! This is what you are!” and he grabbed one of Jay’s wings.

  Jay reflexively yanked it clear. He thumped his chest and said, “No! This is what I am! In here! But when people look at me they just see a bunch of feathers on my back!” His voice rose in anger. “And if I decide I want to get rid of them, then that’s my choice! Okay, you little jerk?” He tried to move past him, and Edward’s fist flew as if by its own accord. He hit Jay squarely in the face, splitting his lip. Jay put his hand to his mouth, and it came away with blood.

  He lunged at Edward and missed clean as Edward vaulted straight up, out of reach. But then Jay opened his mouth, filling the room with high-powered sonics. Edward clapped his hands to his ears, his focus gone, and the moment he was on the ground, Jay was upon him. He slammed Edward to the floor and tried to punch him in the face. Edward raised his forearms to absorb the blows.

  The sounds of battle were bringing other students running, and Edward was seized with a desperation to get out from under the pounding he was taking from Jay. That desperation translated into fury. He grabbed the bottle that had fallen off the table by the neck and brought it up and around, banging it into the side of Jay’s head. Edward didn’t have much upper-body strength, so it was hardly a lethal blow, but it was sufficient to dislodge him. He tumbled back. Edward scrambled to his feet and hauled Jay up with one hand, which was easy to do since Jay’s bones were fairly light.

  Had he been thinking ahead—had he indeed had any serious combat training—Edward would have realized the flaw in that tactic. If he’d kept Jay on his back, Jay’s wings would have been pinned and useless. As it was, b
ecause he was upright, Jay’s wings were freed. They began to flap with great ferocity, propelling the two of them toward a picture window. Just as other students arrived on the scene, Edward and Jay smashed through the window.

  On television and in the movies, people crashed through windows and quickly bounded to their feet, surrounded by broken glass but ready for more fighting. The reality, Edward learned, was very different. He and Jay lay dazed on the ground, outside the building. Jay’s wings had actually absorbed much of the impact, but it was still enough to rattle both their brains. And the glass was sharp. Both of them had cuts and gashes on their faces and upper arms, and rips in their shirts.

  They lay there amid the shattered glass, gasping for air. It was an effort for both of them to stand. The world swirled around Edward as he tried to focus. Through lips that were already swelling up, he said thickly, “You…are such a tool…”

  Even though the world was still spinning from his point of view, Edward began to rise off the ground. “Come up here and say that.”

  “You got it.” Jay’s wings started to flap. Edward immediately covered his eyes as little bits of glass flew in all directions. Jay backed up, shaking the last of the glass from his feathers. Then he suddenly angled downward, dive-bombing toward Edward.

  They were still only a couple feet off the ground, and Edward started to rise to meet the charge. Abruptly something grabbed him around the ankle and yanked hard. He was helpless to resist as he was slammed to the ground with even more force than when he’d crashed through the window.

  Logan looked down at Edward with great annoyance.

  Jay tried to brake, but he had too much speed going downward. Without even deigning to look in his direction, Logan swung his palm back, catching Jay across the face. Had Logan made the move at full speed, it would have crushed Jay’s skull. As it was, the strength of the Adamantium skeleton inside Logan’s hand was sufficient to knock Jay to one side. Spiraling at an angle, he ricocheted off the side of the building and rolled to a stop two feet away from Edward.