Gifted

  It was difficult for the students to process the idea that they were no longer under attack. Their collective pulse was still extremely high. One of them leaned against the wall, dramatically clutching at his chest. (He would later be found to be suffering from heartburn.)

  Finally, all eyes turned to Emma, who was standing precisely where she had been, utterly indifferent to the pandemonium she’d caused.

  “So. What have we learned?” she said, as casually as one might ask a child coming home from kindergarten. “Anyone? Anyone?” No one replied. Small wonder. The students were busy composing themselves, and Cyclops, Beast, and Kitty were just glaring at her, irritated about becoming pawns in Emma’s little battle of wits.

  “We have learned,” she went on, “that they will always hate us. We will never live in a world of peace. Which is why control and non-violence are essential. We must prove ourselves a peaceful people. We must give the ordinary humans respect, compliance, and understanding. And we must never mistake that for trust. All right, you all have your room assignments. Classes start tomorrow. Dismissed.”

  She watched the shaken students file out. Some of them were still trembling, and there were nervous mutterings of, “Is that gonna happen all the time around here?”

  Kitty approached Emma and snapped at her, “I should have known. Holding the orientation in the Danger Room…I should have known you’d pull some sort of holographic stunt just to scare the crap out of them.”

  “Yes. You should have,” said Emma, not the least bit put out by Kitty’s clear annoyance. “Perhaps you weren’t sufficiently prepared the first time you attended this school. You may want to take a refresher course or two. You might find some of my lectures useful.”

  “Yeah? What are you teaching? Defense against the Dark Arts?”

  “Next semester, perhaps.”

  Emma descended from the podium, one elegant stride at a time. Hank walked to the edge, no less annoyed than Kitty. His shirt was half open and his glasses were in his hand. “Are you aware what could have happened here, Emma?”

  “It was a calculated risk.”

  “Those kids,” and he pointed a clawed finger, “were in a panic. One or more of them could have been badly injured in the stampede. Did you factor that into your calculations?”

  “Yes, I did. Just as I factored in that everybody is the hero in their own narrative.” One delicate eyebrow arched on her chiseled face. “Everyone imagines that, when faced with danger, they’re going to save the day. It leads to overconfidence, which in turn leads to death. These children are just beginning to learn the harsh realities of being a mutant in a world in which people would just as soon kill them as look at them. They need a baseline from which to start, an honest assessment of where they are now, so they can understand just how far they need to go. Every student here who shrieked or ran or soiled her or himself, the first time they faced what they believed to be true danger, is going to be shamed by that reaction. They have been forced to face themselves and they’ll know they were found wanting. It will give them something to aspire to, someplace to build from, so that when the real thing comes for them—as it inevitably will—they’ll be ready. Or at least as ready as we can make them. Oh, and by the way, Doctor McCoy…” She smiled thinly. “Love the glasses. Marvelous disguise. When you wear them, I can’t even tell it’s you.”

  Then she looked to Scott. A moment frozen in time. Even Kitty and Hank turned to Scott to see whether he had something to say.

  He said nothing. He simply stood there and stared at her, his face devoid of any expression.

  That silent moment seemed to extend indefinitely. Then, without another word, Emma turned and walked away, her hips swishing back and forth.

  “Nice going, Scott,” said Kitty. “You sure told her.”

  “We’ll discuss it,” said Scott. “Just not here and not now.”

  “When, then?”

  “When I calm down.”

  He strode away, leaving Kitty and Hank looking at each other.

  “He was angry?” she said.

  “Actually, he was,” said Hank. “You could see the edge of his mouth twitching slightly. That’s how you know.”

  THEIR paths didn’t cross again for the rest of the day, and it wasn’t until they were in the suite they shared that Scott finally had the opportunity to talk to Emma face-to-face.

  The suite had two desks, one for each of them, which faced each other. There was also a sitting area where they would meet with students who needed personal time with either of them. Historically, and interestingly—although perhaps not that surprisingly—the male students gravitated to Emma while the females would gaze longingly at Scott. Scott had once asked her if she ever quietly eavesdropped on the boys’ thoughts. She’d laughed and said, “Trust me, I could be bereft of telepathic powers—not to mention deaf, dumb, and blind—and I’d still know what they’re thinking.”

  Now they stood opposite each other, leaning against their respective desks. Scott’s arms were folded across his chest, while Emma was leaning back, her arms at her sides, hands flat on the desktop and—Scott couldn’t help but notice—her hips thrust slightly forward. She’s trying to distract you, he thought. Don’t let her do it. Don’t let her do it.

  “You should have told me you were going to do that,” he said, all business.

  “You would have said no.”

  “Among other things.”

  “I feel it’s always better to ask forgiveness than permission.”

  She said it in a slightly teasing voice, but Scott wasn’t going for it. He kept his expression stern. “Everything both Kitty and Hank said was right.”

  “As was everything I said. Or don’t I get points for that?”

  “Being right wouldn’t have mattered if there’d been a fatality. How are we preparing children for the future if they have no future because the lessons killed them? We both know that once that chaos was unleashed, once they started running, anything could have happened. Someone could have died…”

  “Then they had better do it and decrease the surplus population.”

  It took him a moment, but then he got it. “You’re Scrooge now, is that it? Is that how you want people to think of you? Heartless and uncaring?”

  “Scott, in all the years you’ve known me, have I ever given a damn about what people think of me?”

  It was a fair question.

  “No,” he admitted. “On the other hand, I don’t think you’re heartless and uncaring, which leads me to wonder why you’d want anyone to think you are?”

  “I would also point out,” she said, “that the line about the surplus population was said by the Ghost of Christmas Present, who was mocking Scrooge’s opinions. And Christmas Present loved mankind beyond all things.”

  “So you’re saying you did it because you love our students so much.”

  “Sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind,” she said with a shrug of her shapely shoulders.

  He still wasn’t swayed. “What you did wasn’t right, and the proof that even you knew that is that you didn’t ask me.”

  She let out an annoyed sigh. Her tone went from wheedling to resigned and business-like. “During orientation, I scanned the students. Nearly ten percent of them were more than a little excited at the prospect of a fight. I thought we should know—”

  “Which ones were,” he completed the thought. “To know who might have the most capability for joining a fighting force…and who might be the most reckless and possibly get themselves killed in a real fight. It’s a valid point and one I’d almost buy—except you were the one who decided we should have the orientation in the Danger Room. Which makes it come across to me as if it were more premeditated than something you just decided to do on the spur of the moment.”

  “Why are we wasting time with verbal fencing, Scott? It was a valid exercise in student assessment, and whether it was planned ahead, spur of the moment, or a little bit of both, really doesn’t matter. Although
for the record, where else would we have orientation except in the Danger Room? It’s the largest room in the mansion, unless you wanted to have it down in the hangar bay…in which case, most of the students would have been busy looking at the Blackbird.”

  The Blackbird was the X-Men’s transport of choice, a sleek aircraft that had begun its life as a simple spy plane. Since then the ship had acquired concussive missiles and other weaponry.

  “I don’t know about that. With you on the podium, who could possibly be distracted by anything else?”

  “Good heavens, Scott.” She stood upright and began to sashay over toward him in a manner that was determinedly coquettish. “Is that a compliment? A few more like that and you might actually turn my head.”

  “There’s always that possibility.” He thought a moment, and then said, “The students…which ones were—?”

  “I’m not Professor Xavier, Scott, despite our many physical similarities,” she said wryly. “As much as it pains me to admit it, as a telepath I’m not remotely on his level. He can wield his mind like a surgeon does a scalpel. I’m more of a sledgehammer. I can’t pinpoint with that facility, especially when it comes to new minds that I’m encountering for the first time. But if you’d like, I’ll go through the roster and try to narrow it down…”

  She was close enough then to rest her hand on his chest. She gazed into the red slit in his visor that kept him blocked off from the rest of the world. “…tomorrow.”

  “Not tonight.”

  “No,” and her gaze flickered toward the door at the far end of the suite: the door that led to their bedroom. “I have other plans for tonight.”

  “And they include me.”

  “Well, I could start without you, but I’d much rather you joined me.”

  She’s trying to distract you again. Don’t let her do it. Don’t let her do it.

  He let her do it.

  And later, when the clothes came off and their bodies came together, they were able to escape—just for a moment—from the truth that neither of them wanted to admit or even think about:

  Some of those kids were going to die. What had happened that day in the Danger Room was simply a dress rehearsal for the actual, brutal demise that awaited some of them. There was no way of knowing which ones it would be, but there would be some. There might be many. It could be all of them.

  And every single person who died would do so for one reason and one reason only. Because the two people in the bed, who were trying desperately to lose themselves in each other, hadn’t managed to get the job done, had failed to prepare the students for what they were going to face. The deaths of those young people, whether it came in one year or five or fifty, would result because Scott and Emma and the other teachers hadn’t been good enough.

  This awareness of a future speeding toward them like a freight train was something they carried with them every hour of every day. But if they could escape the nightmares that dogged their heels for even a moment, that would make this a good night. A very good night.

  FIVE

  LITTLE Tildie Soames is having a terrible night.

  Her parents have been arguing loudly for the past half hour, very loudly, saying all those words that Tildie knew she wasn’t supposed to say. Things were broken, and her mother just stormed upstairs declaring she was going to bed because she had a migraine. And that loud argument has sunk into Tildie’s dreaming mind, raising Cain and far worse things than that.

  Her dreams are haunting her, terrible creatures moving through them, huge awful things with knives for teeth and saws for fingers and six eyes, or at least she thinks they’re eyes, oozing something that looks like a combination of blood and pus. They are banging against the door of her closet, and even though they have not yet emerged she knows exactly what they look like because they are her nightmares, her own night terrors made manifest.

  In her dreamlike state, walking that borderline where the separation of reality from fantasy is at its thinnest, she clambers out of bed. Her bare feet touch the hardwood floor and it’s cold, so cold, and she pads across it and out into the hallway toward the safety of the only place she can think of where monsters would not dare to follow.

  Her parents’ bedroom door is partly open, which means she can go in. She knows better than to try to do so when it’s closed because the last time she did that her parents were all tumbling in the sheets and breathing hard, and they yelled at her and she didn’t like it at all.

  Her mother is lying there, and Tildie clambers into bed with her. Mother’s wearing a flannel nightgown. Tildie puts her body up against her, taking solace in the feel of the flannel and the warmth of her mother, the security of her steady breathing, her bosom raising up and down rhythmically.

  The monster cannot attack her here.

  And she hears the closet door burst open from down the hallway.

  Her spine stiffens; her sphincter tightens. She stops breathing.

  The monster could not possibly know where I am.

  It’s approaching, its claws clicking on the hallway floor.

  The monster would not dare come in here.

  The bedroom door bangs open, and Mommy, startled by the noise, sits up, looking confused, caught in that same place of half-awake/half-asleep that has Tildie in its clutches. “What the—?” The words sound thick like syrup, and suddenly Mommy screams and clutches Tildie to herself protectively, and she screams again and the monster charges forward, grabbing at Tildie, yanking her out of her mother’s grasp. It pulls Tildie into it, and it’s only at that moment Tildie realizes the monster is a she, a female, a mother itself, and it wants Tildie for its very own. It shoves Tildie into its body and Tildie is floating in the air, a part of it now, trapped, and her mother screams inarticulately, lunging for it. Mommy is screaming and Tildie is sharing the monster’s thoughts, and the monster is thinking, “Her screams are yummy.” And the monster reaches out and grabs her mother by either arm and starts to pull, and suddenly Tildie is back in the schoolyard, watching that icky Hunter Jenkins plucking the wings off a writhing fly, and Tildie’s mother has time for just one shriek before her body is ripped in half, right down the middle. Blood is everywhere, on the bed, on the wall, on the tongue of the monster that savors it, on everything except Tildie herself who continues to float helplessly, and Tildie is screaming but her screams are muffled by the monster.

  Her father is at the door, fully dressed in his day clothes, shouting things like “What the hell is going on up here? Did you drag Tildie into this?” She tries to yell, tries to tell her father to run, but he stands there paralyzed, his eyes wide with horror, and the monster goes for him, grabs him, guts him, the blades going into him so easily, like knives slicing into butter, and her daddy stares down at what’s seeping from his gut, trying desperately to shove pink tubes and other stuff back into where it’s supposed to go. He sags to his knees and there’s gurgling sounds coming from his mouth, which the monster doesn’t seem to like all that much, so the monster picks him up and slams him against the wall to stop him from gurgling.

  Then come the red lights that flood the room, the red lights that she doesn’t understand, and there are two more men at the door, policemen. Policemen are her friends. She knows this because one of them came to school a few months ago and told them so. He’d had a bright, shiny badge and a dog, and a gun in his holster that he wouldn’t remove so the boys could see it, no matter how much they begged him to.

  There is no dog now and she can see the guns clearly, both pointed at her, and the monster lashes out with its free hand (its other hand is still buried in Daddy’s chest) and drives its fist straight through the chest of the nearest policeman. It lifts him clear off his feet, pinning him against the wall like a butterfly, and the second policeman’s hands are trembling as he fires his gun, and the bullet is coming right at her and she’s going to die she’s going to—

  “Veeda!” she cried.

  Tildie jerked awake, her short brown hair hanging in fron
t of her eyes, covering the narrow scar on her forehead. Her nightgown was plastered on her sweating body. She was shaking uncontrollably, the images she’d just seen glued to the insides of her eyeballs. The small bedroom that had become the be-all and end-all of her world was dark, and in the darkness she was sure, she was absolutely positive, that the monsters were lurking again. They had enfolded her into themselves, or itself, or however many selves they were, and had—as a consequence—taken up permanent residence within her, waiting for their moment to escape and wreak more havoc. “Veeda!” she screamed again, and then the room was suddenly filled with light.

  It was not a particularly large room. The walls were pink, and there was a single dresser that was nevertheless large enough to contain all her clothes, save for the blood-soaked nightgown she hadn’t seen since That Night (It had been analyzed thread by thread and was now in a plastic bag safely tucked away in a locker she would never see.) And there was that large mirror on the other side of the room. She’d never seen a mirror quite so large and didn’t understand the need for it, but otherwise she didn’t give it any thought.

  Veeda stood framed in the doorway. Veeda was the only person she ever saw these days. Veeda, with her brown skin and that pretty red dot on her forehead, was also the only person she cared about, because Veeda cared about her. Veeda had, through no means Tildie understood, taken her away from the dark cell and the scary people who had put her there and who had treated her like she was the nightmare that everyone should be afraid of.

  “Tildie, sweetie, I’m right here.” Her voice had that strange accent, but it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered except that Veeda was where she needed her to be.

  “It came back!” Tildie cried out. “I saw it! I felt it! I—”

  Veeda sat on the edge of the bed and took the child into her arms. “It was just a dream, Tildie,” she said soothingly.