Subject: [OTL]: HellsX 43 Date: Mon, 26 Jul 2004 04:39:57 -0700 (PDT) From: D Benway HellsX [43:45] The Bunker Produced by Benway. See notes for disclaimer. _______________________________________________________________________________ The battle was still raging somewhere up on the second floor when she finished digging herself out of the rubble. It wasn't only concrete that had buried her. She recognized the metal that once been part of Rasputin, but none of the charred and disrupted flesh that caked the walls and the ceiling. She leapt upwards and landed in part of what had once been a library. She let her senses range. There were a few humans still crawling around in the basement. Through a window, behind, she could see troops outside the gates hiding behind portable barriers, but they weren't moving in. There were helicopters too, but none flew over the grounds. Nearby, there was a human still alive, but he wasn't moving. She didn't find him at once. She found four dead Sentinels, then Wanda's father in a tuxedo, lying on the carpet with his throat torn out. Next to the corpse was a pair of legs. Their owner was at the end of a trail of blood, propped against the wall. "Constantine," she said. "Who?" he wheezed. "Not him. Pete." "Whatever," she said. "Got to save her," he said. He appeared to have stopped the bleeding by cauterizing the wound closed just below his navel. "Did you set me up?" she said. "Save her," he said. "Best of all of us." "How far back does it go?" she said. "Did you kill Doug? Did you kill my mother?" "Goes on forever," he said. "Forever and ever and into Our Mother's dark maw." A section of the wall containing a window fell away, revealing the police lines along the ellipse. "She's upstairs," he said. "Need some help with the stairs." "Is Angelica up-" she said, as he exploded all over her. She phased. Four more shots in quick succession passed through and shredded a giant portrait of the President leading American soldiers into Berlin. One of the bullets left a glowing blue trail. She backed out of the room, and made for the centre hall. The staircases to the second floor had collapsed, and their remains were buried in huge mass of melting ice. She could see human bodies in the ice, but turned away before she saw any faces. She airwalked up to an intact part of the second floor. There were no further sounds of battle, and the loudest thing she could hear were the helicopters outside. There was a human still alive, exactly one. Nothing in the next room lived. There were parts of bodies, perhaps twenty or thirty. She saw Summers' visor in pieces in a corner lit by the moonlight through a hole in the ceiling. She could find nothing left of him that was at all recognizable, not even the faintest trace of glowing quicksilver. She entered another room. The President was there. Something had happened to him that her father once had told her was anatomically impossible. There was also a heartbeat, coming from behind the remains of the desk. One of the Avengers was lying there. "Angelica?" she said. Kitty reached for the girl's shoulder and gave it a gentle shake. Angelica's head rolled to one side, and most of her brains fell onto Kitty's hand. "No," whispered Kitty. >From the next room, she could hear slurping sounds. Still, the heartbeat was in this room, from this very corner. Kitty licked her hand, then pushed the corpse aside. Underneath was the First Lady, dressed as always from head to toe in black. The wrappings around her head had come undone, and Kitty could see a white streak in her red hair and the iridescent green of her remaining eye among the burns. "Istah," said the First Lady. "Amistah." "No," said Kitty. The First Lady raised a charred arm and pointed with her remaining finger towards the bedroom, where the slurping sounds were becoming less and less frequent. "Unnerneath muh pillow," said the First Lady. Kitty could hear the sound of a man sobbing. "Master?" she whispered. There was a naked, terribly wounded man sitting on the bed, surrounded by the evaporating quicksilver remains of Logan. "Didn't want to do it," said Castle. "Never wanted any of this." "Oh," said Kitty. He was healing as she watched, but he was looking right through her. "They kept buggin' me," said Castle. "I'd come home and it'd never be quiet. Always screaming, always yelling. So I made it stop." Kitty edged back towards the door. Faster than she could see, Castle hurled something off the bed that embedded itself in the wall. It had been someone's arm, at one time. Kitty edged away from the door, towards the end of the bed. "I told him," said Castle. "I told him what I did and begged him to make it end. He said he would and he made me into this. None of it would have happened if I'd killed myself, but I couldn't. Suicide is a mortal sin." Kitty could see the blue glow coming from under the pillow. "Killing what's dead isn't a sin," said Castle. "Why doesn't it make me feel better?" "Dunno," said Kitty, reaching under the pillow and phasing the moment her hand came into contact with the hard metal. She didn't scream when she grabbed what wasn't a gun, but was something made of pure endsilver. The pain was worse than three stress fractures, all at once. Her hand was burning, and not burning in a way that would repair itself. This damage was forever. "Why would anyone make a dildo out of that stuff?" said Castle, as he watched her phase it into his chest. "Dunno," she said. Kitty unphased and the world went white. Some time after that, she became aware that she was still alive, but not intact. Her right arm was mostly gone, and she couldn't see anything with her left eye. She felt slightly better than she had after the car explosion in the desert, but the same fatigue was overtaking her. She knew what would happen if she lay back down on the floor. She dragged herself across the rubble, watched continuously by an unblinking green eye. Kitty barely had the strength to claw away the wrappings and find a small region of uncharred flesh near the carotid artery. Kitty bared her fangs. The First Lady didn't pull away. Kitty tore into her throat and- [Next: The First Lady]