Gifted

  “He got a huge shock and he almost died. It’s not his fault.”

  “Well, it’s sure as hell not mine, either. He might be dead if it weren’t for me.”

  “I know that, and on some level he knows that, too. He just needs time to…I don’t know…adjust.”

  Eddie lay on the table, staring up at the ceiling. It was as if the impact from careening into Rockslide had knocked all the fight out of him. Hisako went over to Elixir and gestured with her head that they should step outside. With a weary sigh, and a very tentative stride, he followed her out into the hallway. Softly enough to make sure that Eddie couldn’t hear her, she said, “Is there any chance that you could restore him to what he was?”

  He looked genuinely regretful. “Believe me, I’d love to.”

  “But how do you know for sure? I mean, you don’t even know how this drug works.”

  “I actually kind of do. When I heal someone, I don’t just, y’know, ‘fix’ them. I get a sense of how their body works, all the chemical processes. It’s not deliberate; it just comes with the territory.” He paused, looking like he was trying to work out things in his head before going on. “The best I can explain it is that when mutants like you or me reach a certain age, something in the DNA triggers and the mutation presents itself. This thing…I think it may have reversed the trigger. Put the bullet back in the chamber.”

  “I’m not entirely sure I’m following.”

  He rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Okay, look…mutant powers typically show up when we hit adolescence, right? Because when adolescence happens, certain chemicals are released and cause changes in our bodies. Usually it’s, y’know…body hair or breasts…”

  “Not so much with the latter in my case,” she said ruefully, “but I get it.”

  “Okay, but…it’s not the hormones themselves that cause it. It’s the actual release, like a starter’s gun being fired, that kicks it off and causes the powers to manifest. This ‘cure’ that the alien shot into him overwrote that and suppressed the triggering of the gene.”

  “So…” She started to get excited. “So you’re saying that his powers are still there?”

  “Maybe.”

  “So why don’t the hormones that are still in his body cause them to—?” Then she realized. “Because they’re already present.”

  “Exactly. We can’t replicate the first release of the hormones. Not without a time machine or a means of devolving him.”

  “Not right now we can’t,” said Hisako, determined not to give up. “But maybe if you study it with Doctor McCoy—”

  “With who—? Oh. Right. Sorry,” he looked embarrassed. “My first reflex when I hear that name is to think of the guy from Star Trek.”

  She looked at him blankly. “The only doctor I know from Star Trek is Doctor Spock.”

  “No, he’s…” He waved it off. “Forget it. The point is, even if it’s possible, it’s a long way from definite. Until then, he’s going to be stuck this way. He’s going to have to learn to live with this.”

  Hisako looked at Eddie’s forlorn expression, staring straight ahead into nothingness. A bruise was starting to swell on his forehead.

  “Let’s just hope that’s an option,” she said. “We’ll have to see what the X-Men say when they get back.”

  NINETEEN

  THE first word out of Wolverine’s mouth was “Diplomatic.” The last word was “immunity.” In between those two words, however, a lengthy, florid string of profanity tumbled out of his mouth.

  Colossus covered Kitty’s ears.

  When Wolverine’s tirade finally ended, Fury said coolly, “You heard me, Tiny. And having heard, you walk away.”

  Fury was conceivably the only person in the world who could address Wolverine as “Tiny” and live. But Wolverine remained in a feral crouch, his arms drawn back, ready to leap to the attack.

  “Walk away?” said Emma. “Not bloody likely.”

  “Play me straight, Fury,” said Wolverine. “This dink is a diplomat?”

  The green-haired woman stepped forward, symbolically removing herself from Fury’s protection. “You don’t need that information,” she said imperiously.

  Wolverine was unimpressed. “And you don’t need both those arms, Lettuce Locks.”

  Fury chose to ignore the direct threat to the green-haired woman. “I’d like some answers myself,” he said, pointing toward Colossus. “For starters: Wasn’t that guy dead?”

  Kitty frowned. They didn’t know? They had to know. Is Fury screwing with us now? “He was here,” she said, fighting to keep her anger in check. “Here being tortured. Being tested by Ord like an animal so you could design your cure.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Fury said.

  “Oh, right, nobody knows anything,” said Kitty. She looked toward Rao. “And you? You still claiming that you were in the dark about that?”

  “Absolutely,” said Rao. “I would never condone—”

  “Your lies are getting less convincing with repetition,” said Emma. “Fury, you’re clearly in bed with this alien berk, yet you’ve no clue what he’s been up to? Doesn’t sound like you, great big covert muckity and all that.”

  A moment passed.

  I would not want to play poker with this man, Emma’s thoughts informed the others. He is seriously brassed off, that much is obvious. But I don’t know whether he really doesn’t know what’s going on, or if he’s just irritated that we’re on to him.

  So what’s his play, thought Wolverine.

  He’ll probably try an end run. Try to deny—

  “How do you know your ‘Colossus’ is the genuine article in the first place?” said Fury.

  And there it is, Emma commented wryly as she said aloud, “I read his mind.”

  “I matched his DNA,” said the Beast.

  “I smelled him,” said Wolverine.

  Beast nodded. “I also did that.”

  “This,” said Kitty forcefully, “is Peter Nikolaievitch Rasputin. And you owe him the goddamn truth.”

  Fury’s expression never changed, never so much as flinched. But there was a growing anger in his single visible eye.

  “Agent Brand?” Fury said, very softly, very dangerously.

  The green-haired woman turned and looked with irritation at Fury. At least Kitty supposed it was irritation. The glasses made her eyes impossible to read. “You don’t have the authorization to make me divulge classified—”

  “Yeah? What I do got is the urge to disappear and leave this dink,” and he inclined his head toward Ord’s unconscious form, “at the mercy of these very unreasonable super-powered types. Tell them the truth, Brand. It ain’t like they’re gonna like it, and it’s the only option you got if you want this nimrod alive. Because I’ll tell ya what: I dunno for sure that the Commie over there—no offense—”

  “None taken, capitalist lackey.”

  Fury paused. “God, I miss the Cold War,” he said wistfully. “Where was I? I dunno if he’s got what it takes to off your boy Ord in cold blood. He’s pissed now, but from the look of him, I’m thinking he won’t, if for no other reason than it’ll damage him in the eyes of the little lady over there. Right?” Before Kitty could say anything, he continued, “On the other hand, I’ve known Wolverine more years than either of us would admit. And Wolverine, well…he’d gut him like a trout without a second thought. Am I right, Logan?”

  “Actually, I wouldn’t give it a first thought.”

  Fury gestured toward Emma and Cyclops. “And I wouldn’t count on Frosty the Snow Queen to stop him. Laser Gazer might, but—”

  “I’m feeling faint,” Cyclops said humorlessly. “I could pass out at any time, and God knows what could happen while I’m unconscious.”

  “Right, so…your call, Agent Brand. Make your peace with it, or they’ll make their pieces with him.”

  There was a long moment of silence. Then Brand turned to face the assembled X-Men. “I’m Special Agent Abigail Brand.
I head the Sentient Worlds Observation and Response Department. We work with S.H.I.E.L.D. and handle matters extraterrestrial.”

  Beast ran the name through his head. “Sentient Worlds Obser—S.W.O.R.D.? And S.H.I.E.L.D. The government and their acronyms…honestly, it’s adorable.”

  “I didn’t pick the name.” Brand paced back and forth, a couple steps one way, a couple the other, as if she were delivering a briefing—which, to all intents and purposes, she was. “The thing is, S.H.I.E.L.D. has its hands full trying to keep this world together. And somebody has to keep track of the others.”

  “So funding terrorists isn’t just for earthlings anymore?” Cyclops did not appear impressed by her mission statement. “We selling arms to the Skrulls, too?”

  “What we’re doing, Mister Summers, is trying to prevent a war. We’re—”

  “Uh-oh,” Wolverine said abruptly, and the hackles went up on the back of the Beast’s neck as he growled low in his throat.

  “What is it?” said Fury. The rest of the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents looked around, uncertain.

  Then they heard the noises. The shouts, the sounds of pounding feet, echoing so it was impossible to be sure where they were coming from.

  “Perimeter team, report!” Fury snapped, and waited to hear a response on his ear piece. Nothing came. “Perimeter team, this is Fury! Anything ya care to share with us—?”

  Then a mob of rampaging mutants came charging in through the hole that Ord had created when he made his entrance.

  “Where is it! Where’s the cure!” a bizarre grotesque of a mutant was shouting. His face was in his gut and he had no head, and there were more behind him, lots more. “You can’t take it away from us!”

  “The government!” another mutant shouted, pointing at Fury. “The government is going to take the cure away!”

  “Hold your fire!” Fury shouted. “These are civilians!”

  Like a ghostly personification of every mutant who had ever been wronged, a floating blue girl descended on the Beast. He had the strange feeling she was drawn to him because she sensed the uncertainty within him. “No more waiting,” she said, her voice airy, seemingly hardly there, as ephemeral as she was herself. “No more waiting…need body…whole body…need be human.” The Beast was shaken, as if he’d seen all of his inner concerns and confusions personified in front of him. As if he was being haunted by his own soul.

  FURY noticed the X-Men were doing nothing to impede the mutants. Instead the X-Men had flattened against what was left of the walls, trying to stay out of the way, as the mutants overran the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents. It made him wonder if the two groups were in cahoots somehow.

  Several mutants converged on Doctor Rao, demanding the cure. “I can’t,” she cried out. “It isn’t fully tested yet!”

  Clearly they didn’t care. Several of them grabbed Rao, started shaking her. The Beast tried to get to her, but there were too many people between them. S.H.I.E.L.D. agents fired tasers at Rao’s assailants; two mutants went down, and then the agents made the mistake of trying to taser a large one with a rocky hide. Not only did the electricity bounce off him, but his large hand stabbed forward, grabbed the nearest gun, and broke it in half—to the shock of the disarmed S.H.I.E.L.D. agent.

  Fury found himself surrounded by seven identical dwarfs—apparently one mutant who had replicated six duplicates of himself. None of the dwarfs seemed remotely happy. Fury glanced around, trying to get a line on where the X-Men were. There was no sign of them. They’d slipped away in the chaos.

  Then a report crackled over his headset: “Sir! We’ve had a perimeter breach on the southwest corner!”

  “Really? That’s good to know.”

  “It’s a full scale riot, sir! The mutants who were lined up outside, they attacked when they saw us! They assumed we—”

  “Yeah, I figured it out, Captain Obvious.” Call in the Sandmen, put ’em to sleep, and then demote yourself to crossing guard!”

  THE crush of mutants carried the battle into and down the adjoining corridor. Special Agent Brand was going with the flow, seeing no advantage to slugging it out with a bunch of invading mutants. This was not her problem. Her problem was getting Ord to—

  Suddenly she stopped.

  She ran back into the lab to make sure Ord had been secured. He’d been lying unconscious on the floor, and she couldn’t take the chance that—

  Brand skidded to a halt. There was a large dent in the floor where Ord had been. The fight had moved out of the room, and apparently so had Ord.

  She ran into the adjoining lab, through the hole in the wall. There was no sign of him. She tapped her headset, but could barely hear herself think over the insanity in the hallway. “We need agents up in research right now! Ord is loose and very unstable—!”

  Suddenly she began to sink.

  For an instant she thought perhaps she was passing out. Then she realized that, no, she really was sinking, as if the floor had transformed into quicksand. She looked down to see a slender female hand clamped onto her ankle, and she had just enough time to think, Oh, that little—before her entire body passed right through the floor.

  She was hauled down, down, everything spinning around her so fast that she couldn’t get her bearings. Then abruptly she was yanked sideways. In the darkness of passing walls and insubstantial floors, she caught a brief glimpse of Kitty Pryde’s back. She was pulling Brand along by the ankle like a balloon in the Macy’s Thanksgiving parade.

  Then suddenly Brand felt a chill and realized she was outside. She hung in the air for a moment, like the Coyote becoming vulnerable to gravity upon realizing he’d run off the edge of a cliff. Then she materialized, dropped, and landed with a jarring thud on the ground, knocking the wind out of her. Fortunately, the drop was only a couple of feet.

  She felt her stomach muscles squeeze and, even though she tried to avoid it, she couldn’t. She knelt on her hands and knees and dry-heaved like a drunk, thanking providence she had forgotten to eat that day aside from a couple of protein bars. When the wave of nausea finally passed, she shook it off and looked up.

  The X-Men surrounded her. Kitty Pryde, who had led her on the disorienting trip, was looking particularly smug. The dragon she called Lockheed was sitting serenely on her shoulder. The others were staring down at her.

  “Hi,” said Kitty. “Remember us?”

  TWENTY

  TILDIE.

  It was the only thought going through Kavita Rao’s mind as she sprinted through the hallways of Benetech. The sounds of battle, the shouting, all of it receded into the distance. The only thing that mattered was making sure Tildie was all right.

  Despite all her efforts to help mutants anxious to leave their disease behind, she had never felt quite so terrified as she had when they stormed Benetech. Their desperation was palpable, and that desperation had flipped over into anger and frustration that was worse than anything she had ever imagined.

  I announced it too early. I wanted to give them hope that a cure was coming. So many of them felt no miracle would ever occur…that they’d be trapped in their misshapen states forever and might even end their existence because they could no longer tolerate it…I wanted them to know help was on the horizon. I wanted to save lives. Instead I’ve driven them into a frenzy with desire for the cure.

  I have to keep them away from Tildie. God only knows what they’d do if they found her. What if…what if one of them has some sort of vampiric abilities, and just…just sucks her dry, thinking her blood is the key? Anything could happen if they get to her.

  The observation room where Tildie resided at Benetech had a lockdown mode that would turn it into the equivalent of a panic room. But there was no guarantee it had been activated. In fact, it was possible that the X-Men had inadvertently taken it off-line during their entry, which meant it would have to be activated manually by one of the few people in the company who knew the codes.

  Such as Rao herself.

  The S.H.I.E.L.D. agents had managed to p
ull her out from under the pileup of mutants surrounding her. “Don’t hurt them!” she had said as they extracted her, shoving the mutants to either side.

  “Get out of here!” one of the agents had said. “We can’t guarantee your safety!”

  She had been about to offer protest, but then she thought of Tildie. With that, all other concerns had vanished, and she had sprinted down the hallways, through the corridors, to the observation room.

  In her mind’s eye, she could see Tildie there, up until all hours as she frequently was. Oftentimes Tildie would have a late-night tea party to entertain her stuffed toys. It was such a pleasant display of normality that it gave Rao hope that someday the child could grow up into a life not haunted by dreams or nightmares. Granted, the reason Tildie often displayed behavior bordering on insomnia was because she tried to put off going to sleep for as long as possible, since the prospect of slumber held its own terrors. Ideally, though, all would be well with her eventually, and this terrible past truly would be past.

  As Rao neared the observation room, she was alarmed to hear a thunderous crash and a massive shattering of glass. Instantly she knew what it was. Someone had smashed in the observation window.

  She shoved open the door into the observation room and, sure enough, the glass was lying in a million shards. All during the experiments, Tildie had remained blissfully unaware that she was being watched through the window; she’d just thought it to be a big mirror.

  Rao could also tell at a quick glance that all the records had been taken. The various file folders, the test results, all of it. The computer screen was blank save for error messages that indicated all the hard drives had been wiped, the files either destroyed or transferred and then deleted.

  Rao moved to the large empty space the glass had occupied, and gaped through it in horror.

  Ord was in the room with Tildie. The table with her tea party had been knocked over, and Ord was holding Tildie up like a football, with one hand clamped over her mouth. He was so strong that her struggles were utterly futile.