Gifted

  The guards snapped upright, staring straight ahead.

  Emma studied them dispassionately. She considered the things she had previously contemplated doing to them, and decided she would dial it down ever so slightly. But not too much. “You will go straight to a hospital. You will remember nothing of this place. And…” She provided a dramatic pause, allowing them to contemplate their fates. “…every time you hear the words ‘parsley,’ ‘intractable,’ or ‘longitude,’ you will vomit uncontrollably for forty-eight hours. You may go now.”

  They pivoted briskly on their heels and headed out the door.

  “Nice work, X-Men,” said Cyclops. He saw the Beast staring at him with a raised eyebrow, nodding ever so slightly toward Emma. Cyclops lowered his voice. “My girlfriend is very weird,” he acknowledged.

  “I’m not about to argue that point,” said Beast. “So what do we do now?”

  Wolverine spoke up. “Emma takes Scott back to the school, Hank and me find Kitty, and then we burn this place to the ground.”

  “First off, Scott and I give the orders, Logan,” Emma said. “Second, good plan.”

  “It won’t help.” Rao had pushed the body of the dead girl off herself. Having gotten to her feet, she was busy straightening her clothing. “I’ve already given samples and all my data to hundreds of teams around the world. ‘Miracle’ can’t be crushed now. Not even by you.”

  A slow smile spread across Wolverine’s face. “Nice bluff. But I call. Do you really think we’re gonna just decide it’s not worth our time to trash this place because your cure’s already gone viral?”

  “Do what you want,” she said, her voice flat. “All I’m telling you is that it’s a waste of your time.”

  “Yes, Kavita, that’s what you’re telling us,” Beast spoke up. “On the other hand, all you have to do is remove that little device in your ear and allow Emma to verify what you’re thinking as opposed to what you’re saying. So if it wouldn’t be too much trouble—”

  “You’re many things, Doctor McCoy,” she said formally, “but I know you are not stupid. Kindly do the courtesy of crediting me with equal intelligence. I saw what she just did to those men. The moment I leave my brain open to her, she’s going to fry it like an egg. I won’t have any recollection of my work on ‘Miracle.’ I’ll be lucky if I remember how to tie shoelaces. Isn’t that right, Miss Frost?” and she looked toward Emma.

  Emma was standing there with a stunned look on her face. “Incredible,” she was saying. Her attention seemed very far away, as if she were carrying on another conversation in her head. Then she seemed to notice the others looking at her in confusion. Quickly she gathered herself and said distantly, “That is a…distinct possibility, to be candid. On the other hand, perhaps I won’t. Depends upon my mood.”

  “Here’s a nutty thought,” said Wolverine, raising his claws toward Rao. “How about I give you a choice…which is more than the government is going to give mutants, sooner or later, when it comes to your cure. Either yank that thing out of your ear and take your chances, or I come over there and take it out myself, which ain’t gonna be fun for either of us. Well…maybe for me.”

  Rao gulped deeply. Her hand didn’t move. She seemed too paralyzed to do anything. Wolverine took a step toward her…

  And the far wall caved in.

  Ord of the Breakworld crashed through, roaring with fury, sending wall, machinery and everything else in his way scattering in all directions. Wolverine and Beast leaped clear. Cyclops dove and hit the ground. Debris flew harmlessly over his head, but the impact exacerbated his wounds. Splotches of blood appeared on the bandages wrapped around his torso.

  Grinning in triumph, Ord said, “And to think I went looking for you.”

  “There are doors, you know,” said Rao. She had managed to regain her composure. “Right there, on either end of the room. Would it have killed you to use one of them? Was your dramatic entrance really necessary?”

  Emma stepped between Rao and Ord, hatred on her face. Before their eyes, she transformed into her diamond form. Ord did not appear the slightest bit impressed. “How heroic to put yourself between me and a woman you loathe. I would not have expected that measure of generosity from a stone-cold creature such as you. If it’s of any comfort, I have neither interest nor desire in killing Doctor Rao. You, on the other hand…” He pulled out his circular, bladed weapon. “Your diamond form is quite scintillating. But there is no substance on Earth this blade cannot cut through.”

  Upon hearing that, Emma promptly pulled Rao around in front of her, using her as a human shield.

  “Good to know,” Emma said.

  THE Beast was starting to put it all together. As he’d said before, Kavita had obviously had outside help in creating the cure…and now Ord seemed not to want to harm her. She seemed to mean something to him, and Beast suspected it wasn’t love between them.

  He and Wolverine approached Ord from different sides, trying to get into position for a perfect attack. Then Emma shoved Kavita Rao straight at Ord. He knocked Rao aside, sending her crashing into a counter. She banged her head against a cabinet and her glasses went flying. Beast was reasonably sure it must have hurt like hell.

  Oddly enough, he couldn’t find any measure of pity for her.

  Wolverine had his claws out. He had positioned himself in front of Cyclops, crouched and ready.

  Beast waited for Emma to link in, coordinate their attack. But she was uncharacteristically silent, as if her mind were elsewhere. “Plan?” he said briskly to the snarling, clawed mutant to his left.

  Wolverine was his characteristic, succinct self. “Man’s got eyeballs.”

  “And,” Emma added, her voice still sounding distracted, “if he’s a man by our definition, that’s not the only soft target…”

  Wolverine and the Beast froze. They’d been moving toward Ord, readying for their assault, and then they stopped right where they were.

  Ord’s horrible smile spread across his face. “Too scared for stratagems, X-Men? Then maybe it’s time we finished this.”

  All the times I envisioned Peter naked, or at least nearly naked, in front of me…the two of us alone…

  It was never like this.

  We’re sitting about ten feet away from each other. The room is bathed in red, with alien pillars and curves all around us. Somehow it’s thematically appropriate. I feel like I’m having an out-of-Earth experience. Like I’ve left my body somehow and been transported into an alternate world where Peter is perfectly fine. I’ve switched bodies somehow with the Kitty Pryde who’s supposed to be here, and she’s off in my world where Peter is dead, and now she has to live with a huge hole in her heart. And I’m here with him, and of course that doesn’t make sense.

  I know none of it is true. I’m here. He’s here. He’s here and he’s not here, all at the same time, and I haven’t traveled to another universe. Instead different universes are collapsing in upon me, and I don’t know what to say and I don’t know what to do. And all that time he’s just sitting there, sitting with his back rigid, his hands resting on his knees, like an oversized Russian schoolboy.

  He’s the schoolboy and I’m the teacher, and he’s waiting for me to say something. So I say the first thing that comes into my mind.

  SEVENTEEN

  “I’M gonna need a minute here.”

  Peter stared at her.

  “Before I can get us out, I’m gonna need to rest,” she went on. “It’s hard getting through this metal, and taking you along…it’s gonna be a little…”

  “You look different.”

  They were the first words he’d spoken since he’d collapsed in front of her, on his knees, asking if he were finally dead. She had assured him that he wasn’t, and helped him to the seated position, which he had maintained from that moment to this. His brain seemed to be desperately striving to catch up with the events unfolding around him.

  “Well…yeah,” said Kitty. “I look different because I am. Different.?
??

  He nodded slowly, processing that. “Has it been very long, then?”

  Slowly she got to her feet, her body a torrent of emotions colliding with each other. Peter watched, unmoving, with that same vaguely confused look. She was fighting to keep herself together. “I’m sorry. You have to know that if you’re a clone or a robot or, yeah, a ghost, or an alternate-universe thingie, I can deal with that.”

  “That’s good to know.”

  “Glad you approve,” and then her voice began to rise, the obvious fear of having her impossible, fantastic dream granted, her precious Peter Rasputin returned to her, only to see it crash and burn…it was starting to overwhelm her and she couldn’t stand it. “But if you are some shape-shifter or illusionist who’s just watching me twist, I will kill you. I will kill you with…” She hesitated, then said at random, “…an axe. I will kill you with an axe, so right away, just prove it. Say something. Show me something. Show me something I can’t—”

  “Katya,” he began to say gently.

  “You died!” There was no point in trying to interrupt her now; she was on a roll. “Peter Rasputin died, and I know this because I carried his ashes to Russia and scattered them myself!”

  For the first time, that impassivity in his face, that detached air, melted. There was no stammered denial, no attempt to present a clean, tidy explanation for the impossibility of his return. Nothing at all except a genuinely startled look. Which was exactly what one would have expected from such a self-effacing individual as Peter Rasputin, the humble farm boy. “You did?” he said. When she nodded, he looked down at his feet as if he were chagrined. Then he looked back up at her. “Thank you.”

  She wanted to laugh and cry all at the same time. It was such an understated reply: nonsensical, yet it made perfect sense. It was quintessential Peter. No mere shape-shifter could have come up with a response like that. She put a hand to her head to steady herself, turning her back to him because she didn’t want him to see her like this. “I’m so sorry. You need my help, and I’m…I feel so weak.”

  He was behind her then, resting a hand on her shoulder. Even in his human form, that single hand would have had enough power to break her neck had he been so disposed. Instead it was as gentle as a mother stroking the face of her newborn child. “They switched my body with someone else, I think. Revived me and…and brought me here. I don’t know whose ashes…” He stopped. “I am not a trick.”

  “I know.” She turned to face him. “I mean, I think that I…I know.”

  He looked down at her and there was such exhaustion in his eyes. They were the eyes of a man who had been through nine kinds of hell and could scarcely believe it was over. She reached up to him and he took her hand, wrapping his fingers around it. It seemed tiny in his grasp. “I can feel your hand, and I am certain…I am also not a ghost.”

  It took her a moment to compose herself. She closed her eyes, and then opened them. “Okay, so…rescue.” She glanced around, trying to look past the bodies of the guards that were sprawled on the floor. They weren’t moving, and she wasn’t even sure if they were breathing. She thought about waking them up and questioning them. But if Peter had inflicted upon them damage too severe for them to have survived—if he had, in fact, killed them—then she quite simply did not want to know about it.

  Kitty knew she could float upward through the metal, but if there was an alternative, then she definitely wanted to pursue it. “Do you know any other way out besides up? I don’t think these guys came down through a hundred feet of metal, do you?”

  “No.”

  “‘No’ you don’t think they came through the metal, or—?”

  “No,” he clarified, “I do not know any other way up. I only know the room. Always dark inside. Cold. They kept me strong, healthy…I pounded the walls every day, every minute, for years…was it years?”

  “I…don’t know for sure how long, because I have no idea how long you’ve been…you know…not dead.” She was anxious to move away from this line of conversation. “In this…this cold room…what did they—?”

  “Tests,” he said hollowly. “They did tests. I would lie in darkness, in that…that place you found me. And from time to time—I want to say every few days, but it is impossible to know, it could have been weeks, it could have been every day—the gas would come. It was always when I was asleep…”

  “Because when you’re in your armored form, you don’t need to breathe.”

  He nodded. “So I would try not to sleep. But it was impossible. Sooner or later, exhaustion would overtake me. And when I would awaken still in darkness, I would actually be grateful. Can you imagine such a thing? Grateful to awaken in darkness, in a cage. But that was better than waking up in the room with the table…”

  “Table?”

  He nodded. “Yes. A sort of operating table. It had four clamps, two for the arms and two for the legs. I would awaken strapped down, and there were machines all around. Machines with blades of all kinds and other devices designed to tear away at me. I would wake on that table, and they would cut me, inject…things…”

  Kitty fought to remain focused on his words, trying not to cry at the thought of what he had been put through, what he had endured. If Peter was aware of the turmoil going through her mind, he didn’t show it. Trying to stick to business, she said, “Did you ever see their faces?” If he did have a description…if it was someone she actually recognized…she knew she’d be tempted to go kill the bastard herself.

  He shook his head. “All I saw were their masks.” Before the look of disappointment appeared on her face, however, he continued, “And him. The one who brought me back. One who is not of this world. He would look down upon me, his face a sickly pale green, and he would say things like, ‘Congratulations, Peter Rasputin. You were dead, and I have brought you back…to make certain you die again after we are done with you.’” He saw the look on her face. “Katya, is something wrong—?”

  “Ord,” she said. Her face conveyed pure focused fury.

  “What?”

  “Ord. His name is Ord. It has to be him. It’s too much of a coincidence not to be. The description matches, plus that sounds like the kind of thing he’d say.”

  “You know him?”

  “It’s not like we’re best buds or anything. We fought him.” In quick, broad strokes she laid out the circumstances under which they had met Ord. Her mind was whirling. “I don’t know what to think. He…what you’re saying is he brought you back to life somehow. Which I should be more grateful for than anything in my life, ever. And then he spends God-knows-how-long torturing you. So, y’know, kind of hard not to want to beat him to death. I don’t know which way to—”

  “Beating to death,” said Peter. “Yes. That.”

  The only time she’d seen his face harder was when it was covered with armor. For an instant the seething hatred in his voice made her doubt, just slightly, that he was who he said he was. But then that doubt vanished. If she’d been through what he had, she knew she’d want a very personal kind of revenge, too.

  “Okay, then,” she said. She wasn’t going to be getting any more rested. Remaining where they were at this point qualified as delaying the inevitable. “Let’s do this thing. Come here.”

  He placed his arm around her. It took her breath away. He felt so warm, so alive. Focus, Kitty, focus. It wouldn’t do either of them any good if she got so distracted by his touch that she left his corpse behind, fused to the wall.

  Seconds later they were drifting upward. Whereas Emma Frost had been jumpy and uncertain, nearly getting herself killed while passing through the simple wall of a building, Peter was the picture of stoicism. Probably perfected it during those long Russian winters.

  Up she went, and up, and then the blackness was complete around her. But her closeness to Peter, the fact that she was bringing him back to the life he’d lost, filled her with an internal radiance.

  The first time she had traveled through the expanse below the flo
or of Benetech, the trip had seemed endless. This time, though, it felt much faster, perhaps because she had a clear idea of the journey’s termination point. Finally she reached the top. Like ghosts, the two of them emerged from the floor and “landed” gently.

  Lockheed the dragon was there, right where she’d left him. He looked from Kitty to Peter and didn’t react in the slightest, as if he saw a dead guy emerging from the floor every day. He snorted with what could be termed, at best, mild interest, and then settled his head back down on his front claws. He yawned once, lazily, and then closed his eyes.

  Kitty sagged against Peter. “Are you all right, Katya?” he asked.

  “Sorry. This much phasing, especially through whatever weird-ass material that is…it’s just taking it out of me a little bit. Don’t worry, I’ll be—”

  There you are.

  She shuddered and mentally recoiled. Emma Frost was in her head.

  No one invited you, Kitty sent back sharply.

  We were beginning to get worried. Although in my case, “worried” is hardly the correct—

  Then Emma realized who was standing next to Kitty. Her mental astonishment brought Kitty some degree of smug satisfaction.

  Incredible.

  Kitty thought she heard a vague echo, as if Emma had both thought the word and spoken it aloud simultaneously.

  Yeah. Pretty impressive, huh? And it’s him, I’m sure of it.

  I know; I just scanned his mind. We knew he was here, but we all just assumed that he—

  That brought Kitty to a halt. You knew? You knew he was here? How the hell long did you know—?

  Henry discovered his DNA traces in the cure. We wanted to recover his corpse. We weren’t expecting that he was alive.

  Rage bubbled within Kitty. How the hell could you not tell me?! How could you possibly keep me out of the loop, knowing how I feel about him—!

  We did it exactly because we know how you feel. We needed you to be dispassionate and focused.

  You lied to me!