Snake-Eyes

Chapter Three: Royal Flush

The Brood are all around us, chittering and screeching with bloodlust. I'm as iced-up as much as I dare, all spikes and muscle, Emma is stabbing at the aliens with telepathic lances (and spin-kicking them when they get too close for comfort), and Fixit is bellowing loudly as he barrels through the horde with both fists swinging and green blood flying from numerous cuts on his skin. The Brood queen sits in her pool of mucus and slime behind her soldiers, laughing wickedly as they swarm towards us, totally unconcerned for their own safety. Ropes of waxy resin drool from the sides of the queens mouth as she cackles, and are cleared away diligently by mindless worker drones that still perform their assigned duties with precision, even though their queen is under attack. The hissing soldier drones, on the other hand, are totally focused on turning us inside out, their red eyes lit with murderous intent and their clawed tentacles lashing out like flails.

The queen stops laughing long enough to speak over the din of her warriors attack. "Surrender, humans," she cries, spreading her talons widely to either side of her massive, armoured body. "Surrender and you will not be harmed any further. Join us! Join the glory of the Brood!"

We give her no answer except to redouble our efforts against her soldiers. Emma lands a solid kick to the face of one of the Brood that has managed to penetrate her telepathic shield, smashing the chitin and pulping the brain matter behind it, while Fixit grabs one by the tip of its sharp tail and uses it like a baseball bat, slamming it into the wave of bodies behind it. The first few Brood drones are sent flying like skittles, their tentacles flailing uselessly in the air, but the rest of them are simply beaten backwards for a moment or two. Meanwhile I keep up a solid spray of sharp ice, moving my arms left and right in a near-semicircle so that I can hit as many of the screeching insects as possible. At the same time I form another barrier of foot-thick ice so that I can get some protection from their stabbing tentacles and sharp, broken teeth. It lasts maybe two or three minutes before it cracks and shatters under the weight of bodies in front of it.

Time to fall back, I think, Emma says telepathically, punching a Brood square in the face as she does so. We need to get to higher ground and rethink our strategy.

"Good idea, toots," Fixit says, before he grabs hold of Emma and myself and tucks us under his massive arms. "Hold tight, kids..." With a couple of leaps and bounds he is once again outside the casino, the sweltering heat of the desert hitting me like a concrete wall. Behind us I can hear the bloodthirsty shrieks of the Brood warriors dying out as the Queen calls them back. Fixit looks behind him in confusion. "Wait," he says, jerking a thumb towards the hole ripped into the side of the casino. "Why aren't those things followin' us? I thought we were supposed to be the main course."

"She probably doesn't think we're important enough right now," I say, shrugging. "In fact, she's probably thinking that she can get to us when she thinks she's ready - and from the way she called back all those drones, I'd say she doesn't think that just yet."

"So, Drake," Emma says, folding her arms across her chest, "what do you suggest we do now?"

"Call for back-up," I say quietly. "With that many Brood around, the three of us are going to be in big trouble if we try anything else. They know were here now, so trying to sneak back in is a really dumb idea."

"No can do, kid," Fixit replies, shaking his head. "This needs to be dealt with right now. If we wait for your buddies to show up there's no tellin' how much more of the city those things will take."

"He may have a point, Drake," Emma says, putting her hand on her chin thoughtfully. "So what do you suggest we do?"

"Wait a second - why am I suddenly in charge?" I retort, startled. "I'm not a leader!"

"Then you had better start growing into one," Emma snaps. "You're the only one who's encountered these things before, so you're the only one who has any idea how to fight them. I'm sorry if that makes you feel uncomfortable, Drake, but that's the way it is. Now start acting like you're in charge, or were all bug-food."

"Okay," I say, running my hands through my sweat-soaked hair. "Okay. The thing with the Brood is that they're all focused around the queen. From what I can remember from Hank's computer files, they're nothing without her - some of the bigger ones are still able to think, but most of them don't know which way to turn until one of the high-level drones turns into a queen. That doesn't take long - maybe a week or so at most. If we take out the queen now, the hive wont be able to carry on, and if were lucky they'll just get back onto their ship and leave so that they can regroup and wait for the new queen to start laying eggs."

"And if we're not lucky?" Fixit asks.

"Then they stay right where they are," I say with a shrug. "The only good thing that could come out of that is it would give me time to call in the rest of the X-Men to clean this mess up."

"I guess we gotta take what good we can get," Fixit replies, brushing a few specks of dust off the ragged shoulder of his ruined suit. "So whaddaya suggest, kid? I'm all ears."

"As am I, Drake," Emma says, folding her arms again, and pursing her lips into an intrigued little smile.

"Well," I begin, swallowing nervously as two sets of demanding eyes seem to bore into my skull, "we could always run into the desert. At least that way we'd die quickly."

"Be serious, Bobby," Emma says. "Think. How can we get the upper hand here?"

I incline my head backwards so that I can look up at the sky, trying to see if the endless blue can calm my brain down enough for me to think clearly. Just then, as I'm looking up into the air, I notice that the roof of the casino has large plates of glass set into it, and an idea springs into my head. Right, I say, a bit more decisively than before, and point towards where I'm looking. Do you guys see what I can see? There's glass in the roof. If we can't get through the doors we could always make our way in through that."

"Are you insane?" Emma asks, looking horrified. "Do you know how high up that is?"

"Yeah, I do know how high up that is," I reply. "And I'm betting ol' Joe here can jump that distance if he really tries hard." I slap Fixit on his bicep with my hand, involuntarily feeling intimidated by the granite hardness of the muscle. He grins broadly, his teeth impossibly white against his grey skin.

"Piece a cake, kid," he growls. "Then what?"

"You drop right onto Her Majesty and take her out of commission. That should let Emma and I start cleaning up the leftovers."

"Sounds like a good plan," Emma agrees. "Do you have a plan B in case it all goes wrong?"

"Run out into the desert," I say again. "Like I said, I have my X-Men communicator and we could always call in back-up if it gets too busy out here."

Emma snorts, but doesn't say anything else. I ball my fists and ice myself up while at the same time creating an ice-slide which curls and winds it way right to the top of the building. In the corner of my eye I can see Fixit jumping up to meet me, with Emma tucked under his arm like a ragdoll. When were all on the rooftop, I take a look down into the casino through the thick panes of glass. The scene is a lot more catastrophic from up here, with every piece of smashed furniture and broken Brood body even more visible. Around the edge of the room, many of the captives are vomiting blood and convulsing violently. The eggs the Queen has laid in them are hatching, and the new Brood are clearly eager to join their buddies. The chittering of the aliens is deafening even from up here, and it gets louder as the first new Brood flops out of its hatching chamber, its spiky limbs and flailing tentacles covered with slime and gore. The Queen raises her own massive tendrils and screeches in triumph, her scream filling her lair. Her children join in, until the whole nest sounds as if it's a single unified creature.

Its not exactly the most comforting of noises.

"Okay," Fixit says, cracking his knuckles for the third time in five minutes. Here goes nothin'..." Then he pounds a hole in the glass plates over the queen, sending a shower of sharp fragments down onto her head. Some of them jam themselves into small gaps in the queens armour, and she howls in pain, whipping her head up to see where the glass has come from.

"Kill them!" she hisses, gesturing at us with one long, claw-tipped tendril. "Kill them and feed their bodies to the newborns!"

"Sorry, ugly," Fixit says as he leaps into the gap he's made and plummets towards the queens bloated form. "Big Joe, comin through!" He lands squarely on her back and crunches his fingers through her armour to stop her from throwing him off, clawing his way along her body and leaving sticky green trails of alien gore running down her sides. She howls again and again, thrashing vainly to try to throw him off, but it doesn't work. As the echoes of her movements ripple through the floor, I generate an ice-slide down to the ground, firing off ice-darts as I do so. Emma clings to me as we drop, before hopping lightly to the floor and smashing a Brood warrior in the jaw with a vertical kick. The alien stumbles away, spitting acidic green blood and a mouthful of razor-sharp teeth.

Come on, Drake! Emma shrieks as she finds her footing on the slime-soaked floor of the casino. This was your plan! Do something!

"Good idea," I say, and bulk up my ice-form by about a hundred pounds. Solid ice spikes protrude off every part of my body, and I use them to hammer a messy path through the aliens. Emma stands alongside me as I do so, psychically backing up my physical attacks by slowing down the Brood warriors just enough for me to make them into paste. Its hard doing this to what I know are sentient beings... but when the choice is one civilisation against another, Ill protect my own society no matter what it takes. Humanity might be pretty damn flawed, but its all I've got.

Besides, I need to cash in my chips here. Cant let that go, either.

Looking ahead of me I can see Fixit clambering over the queen's giant egg-sac, his fingers sinking deep into the slimy chitin of her body. Even from this distance I can see trails of gooey innards rolling down her sides as she screams in anger and pain. As he moves forwards, he is jumped on by half a dozen massive Brood warriors, their heavy bodies completely covering him for a moment or two. The pile of warriors thrashes for a moment or two before it goes still, and for a split second I think they just might have got the better of our grey-skinned tag-team partner... and then the pile of Brood explodes in all directions, loops of innards and armour spraying everywhere as Fixit rears up to his full height, laughing like a madman and smashing his attackers to pulp with his fists.

Remind me again why we agreed to cooperate with that man? Emma sends to me sarcastically.

I think it was his winning smile that did it, I reply, before I see Debbie the cocktail waitress again. She's still unconscious and totally defenceless, and even in the middle of this chaos a worker Brood is busy scuttling towards her with an egg, ready to implant her with a new Brood embryo. This time I'm determined to save her, though, so I create an ice slide and take Emma and myself over to where shes being held prisoner. Kicking the Brood aside, its multiple legs flailing, I hack open her slimy prison and pull her free of it. Her head flops down onto her chest and her arms and legs are completely limp. Help me with her, Emma, I say, quickly throwing one of her arms over my shoulder and dragging her to her feet. Emma follows my example, and together we pull her free of the solidified slime which covers the walls. As we do so, Emma sends me a sharp telepathic message asking me why I'm so bothered about a girl I only met less than two hours ago. "I'm bothered because I'm a good guy," I say, shortly. "I don't know anything about her, really, but I know her more than I know anyone else here, so I'm starting with her. When we're done getting her out of here, we can start with the rest of the prisoners. Okay?"

Emma shrugs, and carries on helping me get Debbie closer to one of the exits. It's sealed with mucus, but a few quick blasts of ice render the slime brittle and easily broken. When it's all gone, I kick the door open and help Emma bring Debbie through. Laying her on the pavement outside the casino, I see that her chest is still gently rising and falling. "Is she still -" I begin.

"If you mean 'is she still in control of her body', then yes, she is," Emma says, briefly touching a finger to her forehead. "I can sense some residual thought patterns from her - nothing particularly special, but at least her mind hasn't been compromised or her brain injured."

"Good," I say, before I gesture at the opened door. "Come on - we have people to rescue."

Emma rolls her eyes. "The things I do for you, Drake. Okay - how do you want to do this?"

"I have a few ideas," I begin. "Can you tell me from here which of the humans in there hasn't been implanted with an egg yet?"

"Easily," Emma replies. "I assume that means you want to give up on the ones who have already been infected?"

"I've seen this before, Emma," I say sadly."Once someone gets infected with a Brood egg, they're not human any longer. There's no way back."

"And no reason to try saving them," Emma finishes. "All right then. Give me a second and I'll try to see who's been infected and who hasn't."

"Great," I say. "Once we're back in there well be able to see who's who when we get close to them - they'll all have blood trails down their chins - but while we're out here I need to know precise numbers so I can get a good idea of what were really up against."

"That's my boy, Drake," Emma grins. "I knew you had a leader in you somewhere."

"I'm trying my best," I say. "Don't tell Scott, or he might get jealous."

Emma flicks her eyebrows up briefly. "I doubt that, but whatever makes you happy." She puts her fingers to her temples and closes her eyes, taking a deep breath as she does so. She frowns for a moment, then opens her eyes again. "There are twenty people left uninfected in there," she says. "They're scattered around the edges of the casino, though, so I don't know if well be able to get to them all in time."

"Well, we can try," I say, icing myself up a little bit more. "You want to give it a shot?"

"Sure, if it'll get you to leave me alone for a few hours," Emma replies, reaching out and squeezing my hand encouragingly."Lead the way, hero..."

"Okay. Here goes nothing," I say, and charge back into the casino. The Brood are still focused almost exclusively on trying to get Fixit off their queen's back, without much success. He is swamped by them occasionally, but claws his way out every time, sometimes by using a Brood body part as a makeshift weapon his favourite seems to be the tail, or a forelimb, presumably because of their flexibility. "Emma, send him a message telling him the backup is here."

"Done," Emma says after a second or two. "He says he'll be finishing this up as soon as he can."

"Good," I reply. "I don't want to be in here any longer than I have to be."

Moving towards the first of the human captives, I can see that it's a man in his early forties, his thinning, greying hair flopping down over his face and his clothes ripped to shreds. I decide to risk an ice-slide to get to him quickly, and move as fast as I can to crack open the shell he's been imprisoned in by giving it a short blast of sub-zero air. As the cold hits it, wide cracks start spider-webbing their way across its surface so that I can easily snap it open. He slumps to the ground when he's free, and I repeat my ice-slide stunt to get him to the entrance. When were both outside, he looks up at me blearily and whispers "What's happening?"

"We're saving the day, sir," I tell him reassuringly. "Don't worry, this will all be over really soon."

But we haven't saved the day just yet, have we? Emma says, echoing the thoughts going around in my mind. Gritting my teeth, I tell her to have a little more confidence and then turn around so that I can re-enter the casino. And its then that our way is blocked by a massive Brood warrior, its jaws dripping with ropes of sticky saliva. It towers over Emma and me, glaring at us with blood-red eyes and baring its vicious fangs.

"You Terrans are nothing but weak maggots," it gloats, hissing. "The glory of your deaths will be mine!" Then it lunges at us, swinging its claws and scoring three deep lines across my iced-up chest. Emma yelps and manages to leap backwards out of the creatures reach, receiving only a small scratch on her shoulder. The Brood snarls and leaps again, barrelling right into me and knocking me flat on my back. For a moment it shoves its face close to mine, its drool running down my cheek and its nails-on-a-chalkboard laughter echoing in my ears. "Maybe Ill make this quick," it ponders, its rotten-meat breath washing over me. "Maybe I'll make you suffer."

As it thinks about how it's going to kill me, it doesn't notice Emma running up behind it. She leaps onto its back, wrapping her arms around its throat and thrashing. Her nails break and splinter against its armour, making her scream with pain as blood starts to drip from her fingertips. As the Brood starts to concentrate on her, its weight eases off my chest. Emma holds on as tightly as she can until I've managed to wriggle free and cover my ice-form in a forest of spikes so that it cant grab me again, and then I throw myself back at the monster, slamming a sharply-pointed fist right into its fang-filled mouth. The teeth shatter like a skull thrown against a wall, and the Brood howls, still partially distracted by Emma. "Kill it, Drake!" Emma shrieks. "Kill it now!"

Ducking under a wild swipe of the Brood's clawed tentacle, I kick one of its legs hard, making the creature stagger as it's lifted off the ground for a moment, and then drive both of my hands right into the thing's throat. Once they're firmly embedded, I move my arms apart quickly, shredding the warrior's armour and making it slump to the ground, dead. As it sags to the floor, Emma slides off its back and then spits on it. "That's for ruining my manicure, you bastard," she snarls. Then she turns to me and jabs a bloodied finger right in the centre of my chest. "And as for you... don't you ever make me do that again. Do you know how much these fingernails cost?"

"I'm guessing a lot,"I reply. "Come on, Emma, we have people to save. We can argue about cosmetics later." Scowling, Emma nods, and follows me back through the hole in the wall.

It's then that I see that Fixit has managed to beat off the Brood hordes long enough to reaches the queen's head, and she twists herself so that she can look him in the eye. She's in big trouble, and she knows it.

"Why do you resist?" the queen squeals in high-pitched desperation. "Consider the inevitable fate of your planet - if you do not join us, you will be destroyed. It doesn't matter whether you stop us here; sooner or later the Brood will have this planet for our own!"

"Huh," Fixit says, casually batting aside a Brood warrior that has leapt at him in an attempt to rescue its ruler. "You know what I think, your majesty? I think death's better than livin' as ugly as you - so you can take your offer and shove it up your oversized egg-sac. No offense." With that, he draws back his big grey fist and drives it straight through the queen's armoured skull, pulping her brain and making every single one of her warriors howl in despair before focusing entirely on him.

"That's our cue," I say, grabbing Emma around the waist and forming an ice-slide to get us over to where Fixit is standing as quickly as possible. When we're standing next to him, he grins broadly, his teeth white against his grey, blood-spattered lips.

"What took you guys so long?" he asks, jokingly. "Looks like we need to do some clean-up here. Got any bug-spray?"

"Don't be ridiculous, you big grey ape," Emma snorts and then belts an attacking Brood across the face with a right cross that surprises even herself. "I'm going to 'bust some heads', as Drake would say. You can stay here, or you can come with me. Your choice." Then she moves forwards, stabbing outwards with fists and feet while radiating an invisible telepathic energy that I can feel burning at the edge of my mind. As she moves forwards, I can see that the energy is clearly slowing down the Brood that come near her, their movements sluggish and drunken as she hammers into them, shrieking with pain and rage.

"Wow. I like this gal," Fixit chuckles. "You comin, kid?"

I shrug. "Sure, why not?"

The two of us follow Emma's angry path of destruction, slamming into the disorientated Brood with all the force we can muster. Their soldiers continue to scream and hurl themselves at us, their claws and teeth ready to cut us to shreds - but without their queen to motivate and control them, they're just a disorganised mob, crawling over each other and making their attacks a blunted mess. It doesn't take long for the casino to get cleared out, twitching alien bodies all that's left of this particular invasion. When they're all dead, it falls to Emma and me to free the rest of the hostages that can be saved, while Fixit takes on the nasty task of mercy-killing all the humans who've been infected with Brood eggs. While he's doing that, I find the cocktail waitress Debbie amongst the small group of survivors. "Hey," I say, cautiously. "How are you?"

She smiles tiredly. "I feel like I just got hit by a freight train, but other than that, I'm fine. Thank you... Bobby, wasn't it?"

"Yeah, that's me," I reply, returning her smile. "Look, I'm sorry you had to get involved with all this, but... well, its kind of unavoidable when I'm around."

"So I see," she says, before Fixit emerges from the casino through the hole in the wall. Her eyes light up and she raises her arm to wave to him. "Joe! Joe, over here! Its me, Debbie!" Fixit waves back, and then makes his way over to where we are sitting. He takes Debbie by the hand, helps her to her feet and then kisses her.

My jaw almost hits the ground. "Wait...so you and Fixit are -"

"Yeah," Fixit says indignantly, his huge arm around Debbie's waist. "So?"

"Nothing, I'm just... surprised, is all."

"Yeah - most people are," Fixit chuckles, before he hoists Debbie up onto his shoulder. "Been together a few months now." Then he extends his hand. "Thanks, kid - savin' her means a lot to me." We shake hands and then he claps me on the shoulder, jerking a thumb at the wrecked casino as he does so. "I reckon it'll be a while before they fix this place up - but when they do, you come back here and I'll make sure you get a bucketful of free chips and free booze all night long. How does that sound?"

I'm about to reply when Emma butts in. "I think it would take a lot more to get me to come back, Fixit." She holds up her hands, the ruined nails still inflamed and bloody. She turns on her heel and walks away. "Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to call a helicopter to take Drake and me back to civilisation. Are you coming, dearest?"

The tone of her voice indicates I have no choice, but for one last precious moment, I try to keep my dream alive. "I'm sure I can change her mind, man. We'll be back as soon as we can, I swear."

"Drake!" Emma bellows, still walking away as quickly as she can. "I swear I'll leave you here if you don't come with me right this instant."

"Better go, squirt," Fixit laughs. "See you around." Sighing, I turn and run after Emma, until I've caught up to her completely. She looks at me and scowls.

"If you think we're coming back to this hellhole, then you're sadly mistaken. Anywhere that costs me my nails is immediately blacklisted."

"Well, what if I want to come back here?" I say, annoyed. "Doesn't that count for anything?"

To my surprise, Emma laughs. "Oh, Bobby, Bobby, Bobby..." she says, smiling and tapping me on the nose. "The sooner you realise that I wear the pants in this relationship, the better..."