Subject: [OTL]: The Chosen Ones [4/12] Date: Wed, 13 Oct 1999 11:21:07 -0700 (PDT) From: D Benway The Chosen Ones: Part 4 of 12 Either/Or Benway did this. ******************************************************************* This story is not intended for children of any age. It contains descriptions of human behaviour which many might find distressing. You have been warned. The characters belong to Marvel. The story is my own, and copyright to me. Many thanks for the editorial assistance of Luba K and Tina S. Other stories are archived at the website of Luba. ******************************************************************** He sat in the pew, head bowed. At 10 in the morning, the chapel was usually empty. For that matter, it was empty most of the other times, unless there was some official school-sponsored Episcopal activity going on. The staff weren't allowed in, except for the official prayer group meetings after dinner. He didn't like to pray in the House, not with them watching. He knew that they were watching here too, but he felt a quiet certainty that they weren't the only ones. As he finished, he became aware that there was someone else in the chapel with him. The figure was wearing an old Army parka and camo pants. He couldn't see its face. He didn't have to. Kitty had left a note in a drop box, telling about the assault. He tried to stand up, but found that he couldn't move. "I need to talk to you," she said. "My name is Rachel." "I have nothing to say." "They can't hear us. I've bought you to the plane. Emma can't sense us. Not your Emma anyways." "You attacked Kitty yesterday." He went cold. If she could bring him to the astral plane, she might be able to read him. "I can read you, but not clearly. Takes me a lot of effort to get in. I can pick up your surface thoughts & sensory feeds, but not memories." She didn't look like a threat, but then perhaps she was not supposed to. "I need you to tell me what happened to everyone. I went to Westchester, and there was a big hole in the ground. Some cops arrested me for no reason and I read them and they thought it got hit by a meteorite. I come from the future, and I knew Kate, when she was older-" "Hold on. You're from the future?" "A future. Kate sent me back in time, to escape certain death. You can't go back to your own past, but you can go back to a near past in someone else's time. I wanted to warn the Prof, and Mom and Dad, before they came after them. Save them somewhere. Get them back." "Who came after them?" "The Sentinels and the Government, pushed by the Hellfire Club. Shaw thought he could control the storm, once he unleashed it. We all got nailed." "Government and the Sentinels went after us, but we beat them off," he said. "Shaw's got us, practically." "What happened to the Prof?" The girl looked terrified, or wanted him to think that she was. He didn't know how to interpret what he was seeing, on the plane. The Prof had told them a powerful psi could make anything appear to happen, once they had you on the plane. "We don't know," he said. "I've read Emma," she said, looking even more desperate. "She turned on Shaw in my time. She joined us. She's not ready for you yet. She's almost ready. If you push, she'll fold. She'll take your side against Shaw. Stop stalling and tell me what happened to the Prof. Please?" "How can I know you're not just telling me what I want to hear?" "Don't tell me anything that Emma doesn't know. That way, if I'm an enemy, I won't learn anything new. I don't know anything. I'm scared." He wouldn't have anything to lose, and it wouldn't violate the Compact if she was an enemy. Then again, if she was a friend, she could be a valuable ally. "See? Nothing to lose. Now, what is this Compact?" "It all started November 11, last year. When we got up, there was a message on the system, saying that the Prof and the X-Men had gone off to investigate something in Central Park. We found out off the news that the Avengers, the Fantastic Four, even the King of Latveria had all vanished, too. That was it. Nothing else. No- one's heard from them since." "No attacks from the government? No Sentinels?" "No. Nothing. Some of them in the House said it was good that a bunch of mutants had gone, but mostly everyone in Washington's afraid. Prof told me, before all they vanished, that they haven't got the new generation of Sentinels up and running yet. Never found anyone as good with Kree electronics as Trask was." "We did," she said. "Some guy called Cypher. Even said he was a mutant. Took a bunch of old Kree Hunter-Killers and made them into something even the Kree were scared of." "The Prof talked the Shi'ar into bullying the Kree into cutting off the supply of spare parts, and now the government and Shaw are trying to cannibalize the old ones, and trying to buy black-market Shi'ar parts. They're not getting very far." "The Shi'ar kind of dropped out of the picture after the Prof died," she said. "In my time." "I didn't know anything about that, only Kitty did." "So how did you end up here?" "We were waiting in the house, to hear from them. We didn't know where Kitty was, neither. Then we got a call from Emma Frost. She said she had Kitty, and that Kitty had made some sort of agreement that would keep all our families safe." "What was Kitty doing here?" "She followed Doug. Doug got a scholarship." "Doug?" "Doug Ramsey. A friend of Kitty's. He got a scholarship to the school. They knew he was a mutant. So did the Prof and Kitty. We just thought he was her friend from town. Nice kid." "What's his battle name?" "Battle name?" "Like Cannonball." "Never had one. Never knew him all that well, before this." "You don't like him." "No. I don't like him." "Why?" "I don't know. I just don't. He doesn't respect himself." "Do you?" "Do I what?" "Respect yourself." "Do you want to know what happened or not?" He felt himself flushing, or what would have been flushing if he were in his real body. He wondered if it would show up on the chapel monitors. "They won't see it," she said. "Time is passing faster, here." "Kitty got captured. Said Frost knew that the X-men were gone. Decided they weren't coming back, and they wanted us. She had Kitty but couldn't get through the blocks. She tried to fool Kitty into thinking she had control over Doug, with a hologram. Kitty didn't fall for it." "Xavier put the blocks in." "Yeah. Kitty asked for them after she got nailed by Frost the first time. The rest of us volunteered. I got them, so did Rahne and Roberto. Illyana didn't need them. She's impenetrable. Even the prof couldn't get through to her. Amara refused to let anyone into her head. Dani was going to get them, but the Prof vanished before he could put them in." "This Doug Ramsey. He's got them too." "Yeah. Xavier put them into Doug and into a girl called Angelica. Just in case the Club got them." "He didn't tell them." "They had no idea. Angelica got a scholarship, too. She ended up pals with the Hellions. She's kind of dumb, but nice. Or she was. She got hurt. Doug joined up with us." "This joining up has something to do with this Compact?" "Frost gave us a choice. Come or she would kill Kitty." "You could have tried to help them escape." "Yeah. Except that she sent along a tape. It had a bunch of interviews on it. People being asked questions about their lives, like you see in commercials? Ordinary people, no names. They'd be killed if we didn't come." "Hostages. Your family." "She figured if it was just our families, then might be able to get them protected. If there were other ones, ones we didn't know, we wouldn't be able to get them to safety if we violated the Compact." "Good strategy. Very much something Emma would do." "Yeah, but hostages can get killed, can't they?" "I've seen so many die that the guilt or innocence of victims doesn't mean anything any more. Why did you not take the tape to the authorities? Kidnapping is still a crime here, isn't it?" "We talked about that, and voted. We decided it was better to go in and try to fight our way out." "That was very brave." "Maybe. You don't know what they showed us when we came. They took us down to this room, where they had Kitty sitting in front of a monitor. They showed us this tape, of the guards hurting this girl. She was tied to this table, and they did things to her. Pierce was there and he said that if I looked away, the next thing we would see is one of my little sisters on the table. They hurt this girl until she was almost dead. It took three hours, maybe more. Every time they hurt her, these little sparks would come out of her fingers." For a moment, he felt as if he couldn't go on. He had wanted to talk about it at that meeting, but he knew from what he had seen in Kitty's eyes, it had been too raw for her to talk about then, either. "They didn't kill her, not completely. They showed us this tape, from a TV newscast, with her foster parents and all, saying she'd gone missing. They had this FBI guy on the tape saying that they expected a break in the case. Then they let us into the room before she died. It was full of faceless ones. One of them took off his mask and it was the FBI guy. They left us alone in the room with her until she died. They turned off the air conditioning and left us with her, all night, in the dark." "And then they had you." "They had us." "So what are the details of this Compact?" "Kitty worked it out. She told Frost that she'd never get anything useful from us by crushing us physically, and she'd never get through the blocks. The only way that they would get us and be able to make use of us was to convince us that Xavier's dream was wrong, and that their way was right." "Their way." "Winner takes all. Find your niche and do your duty. Never question authority, and good things will come to you. Respect your masters and you might one day become one. It's the way of the world, Frost says. Sometimes, I almost think she's right." "She's right about the winner taking all," muttered the girl. "Xavier's dream was full of shit, far as we could tell. So how does the agreement work?" "We live together, like at Westchester. We live separate from the Hellions, we even keep our uniforms. We get trained like the Hellions do, and next Christmas we decide if we're in or out." "Out being dead." "Kitty said if we killed ourselves then, all would be forgiven and our hostages would live." "That's my Kate. Always the samurai." "If we killed ourselves before that, each one of us would lose a hostage." "Why did you agree to it?" "To gain time. Frost said that she wouldn't go after Amara and Dani and mind-fuck them. When the Prof and the others get back, we'll be free." "And they kept their side of the Compact?" "As far as we know." "Emma could be your ally. Shaw is never to be trusted." "That's all I can tell you. Enough?" "I can help you." "We can't trust you." "She can't read you." "We pledged not to seek outside help. That's a hostage death offence. We don't want your help. We can't risk it." "Then just one thing. My Mom and Dad. I need to know where they are." "I don't-" He did. At least, from the hair and the eyes and the telepathy he could guess who her mother was. Her eyes widened in horror, and he was back in the chapel, alone. A wave of inconsolable grief passed over him that reminded him, forcefully, of everything that was at stake. ***************************************************************** He was lying in her bed, under the covers. She was beside him, equally undressed. Morrissey was plying on her CD player. Their heads lay on the pillow very close. It had taken a week of experimentation to establish that the mikes couldn't pick up anything intelligible when they were like this. It was a gamble, of course. They both knew that Frost expected something like this to be to her advantage, and so might hold off on interrupting them, as she had with phone calls during the first two or three times that they had attempted it. They knew that all of the laundry was subjected to a minute forensic analysis, so they were careful to leave signs, or at least he was. She wanted to stay intact, and he wasn't going to challenge her on that. It was harder to provide the evidence when someone else was in control, harder than he had ever imagined. Once, he would have done anything to lay where he lay now, in her hands. Instead, he could hardly wait for it to be over. "I don't know if we can risk it without her," he said. "She's on Frost's side," she said. "It's the first thing she said to me." "But she said to Sam that Frost could be turned. That fits with what Haroun said." "Do you trust him?" "No. Not entirely. Stupid shit's fallen in love with me." "Fuck. You really didn't-" "Well, I did, and that's it." "It's bad for you, isn't it?" "How could you tell?" "You're soft." "Oh, fuck." "Shh." She kissed him. It didn't help. It felt like some sort of worm was crawling around in his mouth. Haroun's cut-off but still-living tongue, perhaps. It didn't help that both Kitty and Haroun ate the sole vegetarian entree offered at each meal. "We've got a problem here," she said. "Yeah, well, even Frost knows that it doesn't happen every time. I mean, those sex ed sessions, if she put them on tape and sold them she'd be able to buy out everyone else in the club." "Mm. Hey. We don't have much longer. I think we should tell Rachel or Ray or whatever the fuck her name is to back off, next time someone sees her. Don't go onto the astral plane with her. It's way too dangerous." "Is there anything I can to do to stop her? I still think we should talk to her. Get some proof about what she's said. Try to catch her in a contradiction-" "That Compact depends on all of us complying. You screw up, a lot of people could die." "What if she could get control of Frost and Shaw?" "What if she's already under Frost's control? It's a trap. We approach Frost, turn her. We find some way to block the kill orders, free the hostages, spring everyone. There's nothing in the Compact about trying to turn her, so if we fuck up, she laughs it off, and it's just another hope dashed. It's the best way. If we turn Frost, we get two psis instead of one. Otherwise, it's all going to be ruined." There was a petulant edge to her voice, and her hand gripped tighter than was comfortable. He squirmed, and she released her grip. "What could they do?" he asked. "Beat Sam or Rahne to death in front of all of us, or maybe just rape them. That would probably be just as bad. You saw what they did to James." She said it in a scary, flat voice. He hadn't seen the Chinese girl in the flesh, but he had seen them huddled together in a corner of a dark room with her corpse on a tape. "Yeah," he said. "He almost beat them off, though." "It was reflex. He knew if he fought back, really fought back, they'd go after his tribe." "Do you think that'd stop him now?" "I don't know. Yana says he's still holed up in the steam plant. Dani went after him, got hurt." "Shit. What about Yana?" "What do you mean?" she said, tightening her grip again. "I mean she's getting really fucking strange. She doesn't say much to anyone, any more. Doesn't come to class. She's being giving people the Look more often, too." "I haven't noticed a change. And I've never understood what you mean by this 'look' stuff." "The Look. She looks at you, and you can't look away. I almost pissed myself when she did it to me. I mean, I don't even believe in all that stuff, and it makes me feel what people mean when they say they're damned." "You're just picking up on her rep. She's really very sweet, I mean, the dark stuff, it's just kind of a defense, you know? After what she went through?" "Just what _did_ she go through?" "Hell." "I thought there was no hell in Russia." "It's more like what we put ourselves through, after something terrible happens. The Prof thought the demon stuff is just window dressing. He thinks that she's like Franklin Richards, able to make changes in local reality, except that she can do it on the astral plane, too. That's where Limbo comes from, it's just a part of her imagination." "Why does he think that?" "The demons. All the ones we've seen are straight off TV and comic books. Not like demons from Russian versions of hell at all. She was very odd when she first came. She would be very quiet, then get all hyper. Ran me ragged. Then, I lost her down a hole on that island, and she came out different on the outside. Older. Harder. From five to fourteen in an instant. It was my fault. I let go. The Prof thinks that it was some sort of survival mechanism. Make herself more like me. Older. Safer." "Sy'm is supposed to have come out of her imagination?" "He looked like this character in that comic I used to read, you know, the one about the gray aardvark?" "Shit. So she's nuts?" "I did a search on the Interior Ministry archives. A traveling handyman named Belasco was killed by a raging mob in Siberia near where Illyana grew up, a year ago. We think that there may have been abuse." He shivered. "I was abused. In that hospital they sent me to." "I know." "I don't remember any of that, thanks to your friend the Prof." "Doug, look, I mean, he tried to do what was best, he tried to get to Illyana, but he couldn't." "You ever talk to her about it?" "Once." "She gave you the look, didn't she?" "No. No, she didn't. I just decided that it wasn't worth pursuing." "Huh. So what are the spells?" "Local alterations of reality. Prof had a theory that all magicians are a bit like Franklin, and that their abilities sort of pool together like a net. The spells are the commands to the operating system." "She could get us out of this, couldn't she? She is that powerful." She didn't respond. Her hand was still. "How powerful is she, Kitty?" "Too powerful." "You don't think she would stop with them." "Maybe not. We can't risk it." "But if she teleported, and hit them fast-" "First, she still doesn't have enough control of the time shifts. She might show up after we've all been killed. And besides, besides, I think, maybe, she might remember stuff, from before, and, and-" "Get carried away. Kill everyone in sight." "Yeah." "But you don't believe in the look?" "Well, maybe, I don't know. She looks at me angry sometimes, but I can always stare her down." "Oh." "Oh?" "Um, well, couldn't we get a more powerful person like Franklin to do this reality-altering stuff? Fix them for good." "Fuck no. It's totally dangerous. The Prof had a theory that if you made the effect big enough, you'd get a chaotic cascade. Everything, all of reality could unravel. The stellar powers are really upset about the lack of control over the superhumans we've got down here. They've been trying to blow this place to shit for years, but they've kind of given up. Even now, we're too powerful for them." "Oh." "Look, let's finish. My hand's getting tired, and I'm getting hoarse from all this whispering." "Fine." "Look-" "What?" "I wanted to know, about, I mean, you have so much trouble getting it stiff, and you never look at me, when you can do it. I mean, what do you feel, I mean, do you ever, would you ever want to do it for real? With me? Some day? Do you love me?" "Uh, yeah." He wanted to put into words the feelings that he had had when he had first seen her in the mall, so long ago. He didn't want to think of what he might feel about her now. If he did, he would have to think about how he felt about himself. That would be deadly. "Kiss." He kissed her. It was a very chaste peck, and his heart melted a little. He was going to say more, but she was already on her feet, putting on her skirt. ******************************************************************* Fat was very useful for living things. Plants used it to store valuable energy in their seeds. Animals used it in a similar way, but also as a means of reducing density and providing thermal insulation. It burned much better than protein, and if you had the right kind, you could get a pleasant flame off of it. Some animals were better than others. Very young ones were the best. She sat in what might have been seen by others as a dank, dark, stinking cave, surrounded by guttering candles that could not be legally purchased in any earthly place. She sat staring into a pool of something that was not water. The source of the fluid lay rotting but still twitching a few feet away. She stared down into the depths, watching the insects play. It irritated her that she couldn't listen in on the conversations between the new player and the others. She could only hear about it second hand, and that was never as good. Always go to the primary sources, as the Prof had told her. Watching Sam or Doug was always good for a smile, especially when Doug was off with his little Arab friend. She didn't watch Kitty, and avoided watching Dani, because if she did, they might become insects, too. This would be a bad thing. Kitty was not an insect. Kitty was a friend. Kitty was important. Kitty was the way back. Except that Kitty kept asking her to watch, especially to watch Frost and Roberto. She wondered if Kitty knew what it cost her. Once she would have trusted Dani as much as Kitty, but after she watched Dani being beaten by James, it was almost impossible not to see her as weak and futile as any of the others. She shivered, but not from the cold, and shifted her attention back to Frost. ****************************************************************** She sat at her desk. The desk was better for thinking. The pipe remained in its case, waiting. She wasn't searching the plane, even though her peripheral senses could pick up Sam's anguish crying out in the darkness. The leaks in their barriers were worrying. Some unknown ally was helping her and she was hoping that it was not Selene. Could Selene have made Tessa now able to write, as well as read? If so, then her position as the club's only read/write telepath would be in jeopardy. Selene might be able to do it. Selene could manage a great deal more than Sebastian knew. She was sure that Selene had put Sebastian up to sending the message that she had just received. The content of the message was much the same as all the others that she had been receiving for the past month, with one major difference. Not only did it have all the standard threats, but it also now had a date. He would be attending the alumni dinner on the night of the Spring Formal, and at Midnight he would expect to see a fight to the death. Further, it would have to be one of the expendable ones. The choice of the victim was to be hers. Hers. But then, he had been careless. He did not specify that the victim had to be one of the children. She smiled, and set to work at subtly stimulating the libido of a very angry young woman. [Next: Little Boy Lost] =====