Disclaimer: Marvel's - mine - whatever. If they sue me for this one,
they've got *way* too much time on their hands.

... And Then There Were None

The last human lay curled on her bed, quiet, broken.

Or so thought the one who stood in the doorway, watching her.

'So you've finally accepted your fate,' he said.

She turned over, sat up, looked at him. She might have been old, young,
pretty, plain - the dirt and the bruises made it impossible to tell in the
uncertain light of the cell.

'Apocalypse,' she said, quietly. 'I didn't think you'd bother coming to
visit a mere human.'

'No mere human,' he said, his voice rich with satisfaction. 'The last
human.'

She studied him, head tilted sideways, her eyes calm - not the reaction he
had expected. He felt strangely disturbed by her demeanour and more than a
little put out. He had always enjoyed a good gloat and she was depriving
him of the opportunity.

Finally she nodded. 'You mean it, don't you?' she said. 'You've killed us
all.'

'All of you,' he said, and smiled. Here was his opportunity at last. 'All
of you,' he repeated. 'The weak and the feeble. Our progenitors - our
failed ancestors. Destroyed by your own children - destroyed by those who
deserve to live.'

Her voice was still cool. 'Tell me, Poccy,' she said. 'Do you ever find
yourself saying "Fools, I'll kill them all" and laughing maniacally?'

Anger flashed in his eyes, quickly quelled. He wouldn't be baited by her.
She was the last - and he was going to enjoy killing her. 'I am En Sabah
Nur,' he said. 'I am the Apocalypse. And I have destroyed you and your
species. I've already killed you all.'

She laughed - a joyous golden peal, out of place in the gloomy squalor of
her cell. 'You always were a fool, Apocalypse. Such a fool.'

'You call me fool?' His voice was thunder. 'I am ruler, king, first and
foremost of the new race that shall rule this world. I am first and I shall
be last. Alpha and Omega. The beginning and your end.'

'Your own end,' she said. 'You've never understood, have you? You needed
us. You needed humans.'

'Need humans?' It was a hiss. 'Not for a long time. Homo sapien superior -
the next race. The ultimate species. We are the fittest and we have
survived.'

'You never understood,' she repeated. 'You were born in the days of
jackal-headed gods - when pharoahs killed their servants to take them to
the afterlife. You still worship your gods of war, Apocalypse.You don't
understand what survival of the fittest ever meant. You are flawed,
Apocalypse, and you will fail.'

'Flawed?' He laughed. 'I have lived three thousand years and you say that I
am flawed?'

'You have lived three thousand years,' she agreed. 'So where are your
children, Apocalypse?'

Surprise flashed across his features. 'My children?' he said, stupidly. 'I
have no need for children. I am immortal.'

She laughed again. 'And your followers are not,' she replied. 'Survival of
the fittest was never about the individual, Apocalypse. It's about your
DNA. It's about your children and what you pass on. And you are flawed -
all of you that are left are flawed. That's what mutant means, fool. You
and your species shall wither into dust and somewhere I'll be laughing.'

'There are children,' he replied. 'I have seen them. We shall not fail.'

'Wait,' she said. 'Wait until mutant breeds with mutant only. Wait till
flaw meets flaw. There shall be no children - or they shall be the weak,
the broken, the dying. Your species is already doomed, Apocalypse. I have
already had my revenge.'

His anger burned inside him, flared about him. 'You shall not be alive to
see that you are wrong,' he hissed and stalked from the cell. Her golden
laughter followed him out.

He had her killed. Because she had laughed he made sure that it was done
slowly. Afterwards he took her head and had it fixed behind his throne so
that she could watch as he was proven right.

*    *    *    *    *

'All goes well,' said the man Apocalypse had designated as Chamberlain.
'The last of the mutant resisters have been tracked down. There is more
than enough food for all that are left. And the reports are finally coming
through from the field teams, sire. Apparently the radiation is starting to
dissipate in most of the ruined cities. It will not be long before they
will be habitable again.'

'Good,' said Apocalypse, somewhat bored. He had never imagined that
ultimate rule would be so tedious. He had preferred the old days - hunting
down the last humans in their scattered guerilla bands. The last human -
his mind suddenly picked up on that thought.

'Tell me, Chamberlain,' he said. 'How does it go with the children?'

'The children, sire?' asked the Chamberlain.

'Yes, the children,' he replied. 'I want to know about the children. How
many have been born in, say, the last six months?'

'I do not know,' stuttered the Chamberlain.

'Then find out,' replied Apocalypse. The Chamberlain scurried away, leaving
him alone.

He turned to look at the head that still decorated the back of his throne
and noticed something he had not seen before. In the dry hot air of his
throne-room she had mummified, her skin pulling taut and harsh across her
face until, now, she grinned down over the throne-room.

The reports, when they came, were not encouraging.

In his head he heard her laughing.

*    *    *    *    *

The child was lifted carefully from its mother's womb, the doctor's hands
upon it cradling it as if it would shatter. It woke at the gentle tap upon
its back, blinked its myriad golden eyes and drew breath into lungs that
might have worked - on another world, in another atmosphere. Here they
sipped at air rich in oxygen and felt it burn and scrape within them,
withering them with its fierce intensity.

It made a half-cry and died.

Apocalypse turned away from the scene before him, turned away from the
death of all his dreams. The experiments had failed, the breeding farms
were empty and the mutants now grew older.

The child was the last of its species.

*    *    *    *    *

He went mad in the end. When there were none left but him, when he had
brooded in his echoing throne room with only the dust for company his last
tenuous grip on sanity had broken forever.

He had torn his clothes from his body and wandered naked out into the
world. He had walked it from end to end, crying out for somebody, anybody,
to talk to him. His only answer was the soughing of the wind and the
curious chatter of the animals that had forgotten men and mutant both.

He forgot his name. The only thing he knew was that he was alone.

He was the first and the last and there would be no others.

And in his throne room, on the back of his cracked and crumbling throne,
the skull of the last human wore a wide and ghastly grin, and when the wind
hissed through the cracks in the wall it almost sounded like a woman
laughing.

The End

I don't know if you guessed from this but I've been reading a lot of stuff
on Darwinism, genetics and DNA lately and started thinking about the fact
that mutants really are not viable in breeding terms and, well, then I just
couldn't leave it alone.

Amanda
wolf@ozdocs.net.au

'To note that the thing I call my individuality is only a pattern or dance,

that is what it means when one discovers how long it takes for the atoms
of the brain to be replaced by other atoms. The atoms come into my brain,
dance a dance, and then go out - there are always new atoms, but always
doing the same dance, remembering what the dance was yesterday.'
Richard Feynman