Subject: [OTL]: The Chosen Ones [7/12]
Date: Mon, 18 Oct 1999 09:24:13 -0700 (PDT)
From: D Benway <d_benway@yahoo.com>

The Chosen Ones, Part 7 of 12:
Matters Come To A Head
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 Tina S and
Luba K. Other stories are archived at the website of Luba.

********************************************************************

He walked up the library stairs, dreaming of emeralds. It was almost
seven, and they were due to meet in Sam's Latin tutorial in the tiny
study room under the roof of the turret. He walked through the
reading room, past dozens of suburban kids who were training for
their GMATs half a decade before they would take them. All that
effort, just to win the union card of the new aristocracy.

As he passed the reference room, he stopped and found an empty
cubicle. Sitting in the quiet, he decided that perhaps he had the
right to be forgiven. After all, he would be a part of that
aristocracy, no matter what he did. Kitty had come to him as he was
too paralysed by despair to rise from his bed, and she had forgiven
him for running. She had told him that everything would be all
right, and that the moment of liberation was at hand, more or less.
She had held him while he cried like a baby, and then she had told
him of the plan. He hadn't taken much of it in. He wasn't sure if he
could manage what she wanted him to do, but he knew that if he
played his part well, he could at least forgive himself. He had
forgotten entirely to ask about where Ray would fit into the plan.

He looked at his watch, and found that he still had two minutes to
make it. He walked calmly up the old cast iron stairs to the top
floor of the stacks, then along the old glass floors to the tiny
staircase that led to the tower room. They were both waiting for
him, early as usual.

"Where's Illyana?" he asked, to break the silence.

"She's coming," said Kitty. "Timeslips, you know?"

Sam looked at him uneasily. It wasn't something they usually
discussed in the open.

"Part of the new Compact with Frost," she said. "No more
surveillance."

She opened up a palmtop computer on which the controls for the
school's security system were displayed.

"We've got open access to the security system now," she said. "All
the mikes and cameras in here are off. We're free to discuss the new
Compact. I told her that nothing was on unless we all agreed to it."

"We being?" asked Sam.

"We three and Yana," she said. "I turned Frost, and I think we can
trust her."

"To do what?" asked Sam.

"To turn this into a haven instead of a prison," she said. "To end
the predation. To keep Xavier's dream alive."

"You're turning the Prof's dream over to her?" said Sam. "To the
woman you called a shit-eating baby-raper?"

"There's more to her than that," said Kitty, flushing.

He remembered those eyes, those lips, that body. The white leather.
He went very cold.

"Kitty, this place is a little bit of hell on earth, and she's the
temptress," said Sam with more than a hint of menace in his voice.
"What did she tempt you with?"

"Sam, she's not the devil, she's a human being," she said. "Yeah,
she's completely fucked in the head, but she's vulnerable. It's just
a question of getting her pointed in the right direction. I'm going
to watch her every step of the way."

"To where? What-"

Sam stopped in mid-sentence as Illyana ported into the room. She was
dressed in a pure white shift that was almost indistinguishable from
her skin. She had the medallion around her neck, outside rather than
hidden away as it usually was. It glowed with tiny red tongues of
flame, radiating out from its edges. It hadn't done that before. The
others were staring too. Illyana was swaying, as if drunk. She
didn't say anything at all.

"Yana?" asked Kitty in a small voice.

Illyana had a leather bag in her hand. She upended it over the
table. Something that had once been round fell out, and landed on
the table on one of its flattened sides. One green eye stared up at
the ceiling, unseeing. Some of the red hair remained, where it
hadn't been torn away. The bloody imprints of the clawed talon that
had torn it off the body were deeply impressed upon it.

"Ray"

He wondered who said it. It could have been anyone but the Devil. He
could not move. Her head was his world, or the end of it.

"No," whispered Kitty. Sam made strange sounds as he gagged.

"You asked me to take care of the problem," said Illyana in a
perfect little girl's voice, straight off a TV commercial. "I took
care of it. She can't interfere with Kitty's plan now."

He looked up at Kitty's face for a moment, but what he saw there
frightened him so much that he looked back at the head. He didn't
dare look at Illyana.

"That's not what I meant," whispered Kitty. "Oh God, tell me this is
some sort of joke. Please."

Illyana said nothing, and that was how they were able to hear the
footsteps coming up the stairs. Four heads turned to look at the
door. Illyana could have cast a spell to hold it closed. She did not
move. Kitty or Sam could have walked to the door and locked it.
Neither of them moved. The footsteps came to a stop on the landing
outside. No-one moved. No-one breathed.

There was a slight click as a hand came to rest on the doorknob. He
lunged forwards and swept the head up in his hands. As the door
opened, he dropped it into his lap. It fell out, rolling heavily
down his legs and hitting the floor almost without a sound.
Carpeting.

"Mr. Wilson," choked Sam.

The man who stood there was one of the English teachers, the one who
had made an un-natural proposition to Sam. Wilson had a flask in his
hand, open.

"Er, just came up here for a quiet moment. Didn't think there'd be
anyone here."

He tried to grip the head with his feet, to push it further back
under his chair. Illyana muttered something, and he felt witchfire
crackling around his feet. The head vanished, as did the damp
feeling where her blood had stained his pants. The fire didn't burn
his flesh. Instead, it excited him. Illyana flashed him a grin.

"La- la- la-,"

"Christ Guthrie, bloody awful stammer. Where'd that come from? You
up to no good?"

"No, sir" he interjected. "It's our Latin tutorial. Tuesday night
at 7?"

"What? Ramsey, isn't it? It's Tuesday? Well, that explains
everything. Venny, viddy, vitchy and all that?"

"Veni, vidi, vici, sir," said Kitty in a strangled voice. "The 'v'
is pronounced like a 'w', the 'e' is a long 'a' and the 'i' is like
it is in French, and the 'c' is hard."

"A hard sea, eh? You all look like you're on a North Sea Ferry in a
force 10 gale. You all look like death, except for this one. I've
forgotten your name."

"Illyana Rasputin, Mr. Wilson."

She was grinning maniacally from ear to ear.

"The rest of you should follow her example. You all look like a
bunch of professional mourners. This is America. Everyone's supposed
to be happy, damn it."

The others tried grins. He couldn't manage it.

"Aha," said Wilson, brightening. "I see what it is."

It was all he could do to keep from wetting himself. Kitty moaned.
Wilson was pointing to something on the table. It was small and gray
and lying in a small pool of thick, dark liquid.

"You've been eating in here."

Wilson inclined over the table, extending a finger as if he meant to
scoop up the mess and taste it.

"Yes, sir," he said. "I'm sorry. I had some shepherd's pie left over
from dinner. I brought it with me, but I got hungry and ate it right
away. It had ketchup on it."

Sam was staring at him, horrified. Illyana giggled.

"Well," said Wilson, frozen in mid-gesture. "You're not supposed to
eat in here. I really should report it."

"Please don't," said Sam. "Oh, please don't."

"Then don't do it again," admonished Wilson. "It encourages vermin
to infest the books."

"Which assumes they aren't there already," he said, with a light
chuckle. It frightened him, how the words could come so easily when
he needed them.

Wilson laughed. It wasn't any more pleasant than Illyana's.

"Last thing I want to do is help to hammer the last nails into the
coffin of a dying language. Not a word about my being here, right?"

"No," said three voices in unison.

"And fucking cheer up," said Wilson as he turned and stepped out the
door.

As the sound of footsteps dwindled away, they remained frozen until
the only sound remaining was the hum from the lights above. Sam
sobbed and started to cry. Kitty slid down the wall, her face hidden
by her hands. He started to laugh. They were lucky, so lucky, to
still be alive, to not have been caught. Illyana gave him a
frightened look, then vanished with her little leather bag in a
blaze of blue hellfire. He laughed a bit longer, then realized that
he was crying. He wasn't sure that he could tell the difference any
more.

********************************************************************

It might have been mid-morning or mid-afternoon, he didn't know and
didn't care. The bed he lay on was the first that had never seemed
small. As he lay curled up at its centre, it seemed to be an ocean,
his body a tiny island. He thought of the head again, and curled up
tighter still. He hadn't slept since leaving the library, and he
wondered if he ever would again. He hadn't prayed since then either.
His bible lay on the dresser, unopened.

There came a sharp rapping at the door. He ignored it. It came
again. He wondered if Doug had lay like this the night before, when
Kitty had gone in to see him. He hoped that it wasn't her. He wasn't
sure what he would do the next time he saw her.

"Samuel."

Any other, he would have ignored. He wanted to ignore her, but his
body was unable to ignore her command. He opened the door, leaning
against the frame for support.

"By all the gods, Samuel, have you had bad news from home?"

"No. What do you want?"

Amara's composure was obviously shaken, but only for a moment.

"I must apologize for missing the tutorial yesterday. I had to visit
Manuel's parents in New York."

Doug had told him that Manuel's parents were lower middle class
civil servants in the Estremadura, who bore the blood of kings but
made their living processing licenses for farm vehicles. Doug had
indicated that they barely had the money for train fare to Madrid,
let alone for a ticket to New York.

"Great. See you next week, then."

"I would like you to look at this. For next week, I have composed
something, and I want you to see if it is too difficult."

She held out a sheaf of paper covered with block capitals.

"Let you know tomorrow. Or some time."

He started to close the door, but she blocked it open.

"Read it," she demanded. "Now."

"Amara, I don't want to read it now."

He was aware of the petulant tone in his voice. She glared at him
with wholly inappropriate contempt.

"I want to know if its subject is in any way in conflict with
what you were discussing yesterday."

He glanced over it. It wasn't very long. Something to do with Ovid.
Complicated. He read it again. Then again. On one level it was an
erotic poem, on another it was a message. Do nothing. More
precisely, do nothing tomorrow.

"Well?" she asked. "Is this satisfactory?"

His mouth was dry. She wasn't one of Frost's. She belonged to Shaw,
and possibly to Selene.

"I don't know. I don't want to think about this now."

"Samuel, I must know now. Is it satisfactory?"

It was a trap. It had to be. Who controlled the assassins? Shaw or
Frost? And who was it a trap for? All of them?

"I'm going to have to discuss this with Kitty."

"Oh," she said, emptily.

She turned and left, barely concealing great distress. He closed the
door, and remained leaning against it for some time before he
returned to the bed.

He knew he had forgotten to lock it when Doug entered, a few minutes
later. Godless little faggot just couldn't feel the same pain that
he did. He sat up on the bed, glaring.

"Bugs are off," said Doug. "We can talk."

"I've nothing to say to you," he said. "Get out."

"We need to know. Are you in, or out?"

"You mean, which band of killers do I choose to eat with? I almost
want to call Shaw and spill the whole thing."

"Then he'll kill us all."

"Maybe quicker than that witch killed Rachel."

"She probably didn't see it coming."

"You think what you want. Her blood is on all our hands."

"It was on my hands. I spent an hour washing them."

Doug held up his hands. They were scabbed with blood at a few places
where he had scrubbed the skin off. The ice in his heart melted.

"How can you believe her?" he said, almost begging. "Kitty's lost to
them."

"No, she's not lost," said Doug, in a tone that would have sounded
like the voice of reason the day before. "She told me more. We
verified what Frost said. She's cast in her lot with us. I think
that she might be in love with Kitty."

The blankness in Doug's gaze frightened him.

"I don't understand how you can think of going ahead with it," he
said. "Kitty's more responsible for this than anyone."

"How so?"

"She must have asked Illyana to kill her."

"Illyana misinterpreted, or got carried away."

"She's part of your plan."

"She will move against Selene."

"And kill her."

"Kitty says she won't. Kitty also told me that Ray might have been
one of Shaw's. An agent provocateur."

Doug might have been talking about the weather. He felt the warmth
vanish and the ice return.

"That's bullshit," he said, hearing his father's words in his own
mouth.

"Who gives a fuck? If we take out Shaw, we're free."

"If we murder Selene, where does it end? Who gets killed after that?
Shaw? Leland? Frost? Me? You?"

"No-one is going to get killed."

"Someone's already been killed. Doesn't that mean anything to you?"

"Yes. No. I don't know. Nothing means anything to me. Not any more.
Just getting out of here. That's all that matters."

A tear trickled from Doug's left eye. It moved him not at all.

"Get out."

"Will you tell Shaw?"

"Ask Kitty if this is part of Xavier's dream."

"Sam, will you betray us?"

"Go."

Doug stood for a moment, looking utterly drained, then turned and
left without saying a word. He picked up his Bible, and began
reading breathlessly.

*******************************************************************

He wandered down the corridor, numb. He couldn't afford the luxury
of indulging his feelings. Not now. They were too large to think
about. The only thing that kept him going was knowing that Ray had
lived through worse, at least until-

He fought back the urge to go and wash his hands again. If he hadn't
been thinking of that, he might have noticed that someone was
waiting for him in his room. As soon as he closed the door, the
scent of cologne brought him back to reality.

"Haroun."

"Your hands," said Haroun in a horrified whisper. "What happened to
your hands?"

"Nothing." He folded his hands together, out of sight. "What are you
doing in here?"

"What's going on?"

"I don't know what you're talking about."

He did.

"With Frost," Haroun whispered, conspiratorially, moving as if for
an embrace. He backed away.

"You tell me."

"Why don't you tell me?" Haroun whispered, now with urgency.

"Isn't that the question I should be asking you?" he said out loud.

"Me?" Haroun blanched, looking frantically about the room. "It's got
nothing to do with me."

"I'd expect you to deny it."

"I would never act against her! Never! I am loyal! Are you loyal?"

"Sure. We're all in this together."

The look on Haroun's face was priceless. He almost burst out
laughing.

"Then tell me about it, tell us all before it's too late. Please.
I'm begging you."

Haroun was shouting now, and he started to wonder just how thorough
he had been in sweeping his room. What if Haroun did have an
audience?

"You're the one who should be pleading, Harry. You've got so much
more to answer for."

Most notably, anyone trying trying to trace his or Kitty's hacking
would be led directly to the logs on the terminal in Haroun's room.
He smiled at the thought.

"Please. I love you. Don't do anything stupid. Please."

Haroun was on his knees, now.

"I don't love you," he snarled. "I didn't ever love you. If I could,
I would chew it off and spit it back in your face."

Haroun began to weep.

"You said that you would flee this place with me," said Haroun
in a tiny, frightened voice.

He knelt down in front of Haroun and moved in until he almost choked
on the combined scents of cologne and sweat. Haroun's eyes lit up.

"My-"

"What I want," he said, unable to keep himself from smiling. " What
I want is for you to go away, and never come near me again. If you
come within 6 feet of me or talk to me ever again, I'll sell your
family to the religious police. Understand?"

"No," whimpered Haroun.

"Yes. I will do it. No hesitation. Our business is over."

As Haroun left, it occurred to him that Haroun had green eyes, too.

********************************************************************

She lay awake on satin sheets, calculating. A shower would have been
good at this point, after being close to Emma for most of the
evening. Frost would have noticed that, and probably joined her,
defeating the purpose of it. Ro would have sooner died than do what
she was doing now. Scott would never have been able to do it
convincingly, but might have tried. Piotr, Piotr would have fallen
for Emma and been lost. She knew it. She didn't cry. Kurt might have
managed it. Charles would have done it without hesitation. She knew
that for a fact. At first, she had been expecting them all to come
crashing through a door or a wall unexpected, to rescue them all.
Now, she was almost glad that they were dead. That way, they would
never see her like this.

When it was over, she would make sure that everything would be
fixed. The others could go or stay as they pleased, but she hoped
that at least Sam would stay. He would be good for bringing the
Hellions round to their point of view. When it was all over, she
would take Illyana to the best psychiatrists that she could
find. She would see to it that the fucking medallion was destroyed.
There was a mage in Greenwich Village that she knew of from the
Prof's files. She would take Illyana there, and everything would be
all right. It just _would_ be.

""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""

Somewhere far from anywhere, the little blonde girl lay curled in a
basin of melted rock. She hugged herself with clawed hands, and
howled to herself. Any that remained living stayed well away, hiding
anywhere that was left to hide. There wasn't very much left, not
after she had returned, knowing that she had lost the only thing in
the world worth saving.

When she had finished, she had gone back to Kitty's room without
cleaning herself. Kitty hadn't been able to conceal her horror at
the sight, and had come to her and hugged her, and they had both
ended up with their clothes covered in the gore from a thousand dead
demons. How could she have doubted? There was still someone worth
saving. She had thought that for all of the next five minutes until
Kitty had explained the new plan. She was to take care of Selene.
Did this mean kill?, she asked. Kitty had told her that if Selene
counterattacked they might all die. She asked if this was true of
Rachel, and the look in  Kitty's eyes had almost killed her. One
more and we're free, Kitty had said. I'll bear the burden of this
for the rest of my life, Kitty said. I'll see that you get help,
Kitty had said. She had cleaned herself and smiled and ported home
and rent her garments and her flesh, then collapsed in a crater of
hellfire-melted rock. She eventually fell asleep, warmed by the
radiant glow of the four red stones in her amulet.

[Next: The Party]

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