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Issue #10 |
Written By Tom Moses |
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A plan devised on the way to the site under investigation separated the medically inclined duo. Walking in separate directions doesn't save either from the sight of death at their feet, nor does it save them from the odor of smoldering flesh. Most of the burned bodies seem to have been curled into a fetal-like position almost as if they collapsed on themselves much like the plastic toy soldiers tortured by children.
"This is surprising."
"What are you babbling about now McCoy?" Doctor Reyes dropped to a knee curious over the other doctors repeating questions.
"This entire scene almost looks undisturbed," the man known as Beast points out, "nothing I would say would convince anyone these people died of being burned."
"You're suggesting a mass murder then?" Reyes questioned again. "That's a big step to jump to with no proof."
"Try looking at this from a different point of view than the obvious," he continues. "These poor souls were obviously burned beyond normal identification, though it doesn't mean they died that way."
"McCoy?" Cecelia asked over her two-war radio. "Have you looked at any of these corpses?"
"Not many no," he answered the doctors' call. "Hath thou findeth something?"
Cecelia held the crumbling flesh of a hand in the gloves of her own. "Beast, stop right where you're at. Take a good look and tell me what you see over there."
The blue-fur covered man does as instructed; crouching low to view the bodies below him taking a knee gawking at the remains of what could have once been a woman. "I'm going to have to question Shiro on the level of heat this fire generated," McCoy said as he stares downward.
"No McCoy, that's not going to be necessary," Reyes corrected the more educated doctor. "Burnt flesh doesn't crumble like paper this soon after exposure to normal heat. I only hope that you are guessing the same that I am."
"I am far more curious of the bone structure myself," Beast stated. "Faintly human in arrangement on first notice, but very fundamentally non-human if you look close enough."
"The plot thickens Henry," Cecelia said, mostly to herself.
The inner room reeked of isopropyl alcohol, the group of four nearly thrown back by the assault of their sense. Havok took the liberty of showing himself around the room. The decorative evidence is all around, the third letter from the end of the alphabet everywhere in plain site.
"I'd guess it would be too much to ask if these computers worked?" Alex asked.
"All the power is turned off, for fear of anything sparking another blaze like that which occurred last night," Shiro answered.
Following the lead of Havok, Storm and Multiple Man helped themselves to searching the damaged room. The weather maker found herself in front of several rows of empty cabinets while Jamie searches for any document left un-shredded in several bins of trashcans. "This doesn't look good at all Alex," Storm called out.
"We won't find any evidence here Havok," Jamie spoke up. "I wasn't with them very long, but this place looks like they just didn't want it anymore."
Spinning in mid-stride, Alex faces his friend. "Explain Jamie."
He attempted to shake the stinging from his eyes, bloodshot they'll soon begin to water from the saturation of alcohol in the air. "In the event of compromise - or if the mission calls for it - X-Corps are prepared to lay waste to every facility they operate," he began, speaking in a low tone. "The shredding of files is only the start of the complete destruction of everything they possibly had hidden away here. Though this looks like just a random accident, there is a method to this madness, there is a method to everything they do."
"The slaughter of nearly a hundred people part of those methods?" Sunfire asked the former member of the X-Corps with his eyes burning with a fire possibly hotter than the one which had occurred last night.
"It would seem so," Jamie answered, his heart heavy. "I'm almost afraid to know what Beast finds out there, but I'll put money down that every corpse out there is mutant."
"Jamie, there's something you're not saying." Alex asked of his friend. "What are you trying to get up to?"
Closing his eyes, Jamie breathes deep. "Whoever was tasked to destroy this building.they didn't do it right," he said as he reached behind the rows of filing cabinets and pulled a block of plastic explosive he hoped not to find. "This building was meant to go too, but for whatever reason it didn't."
"This is hardly a punishment, Zel," Bobby Drake said while reclining in the couch.
Zelda smiled. "It's not meant to be one either," she said, "This is all to help you start talking to me. I'm going to be honest with you Bobby; with the exception of you I dated some really low guys that really treated me wrong. Now I like you, and that's a big step for me lately, but I swore to myself I wasn't going to let anyone take advantage of me ever again. I appreciate the fact that you can laugh away things that life throws at you, but I can't," Zelda confided to Drake, holding his face in close quarters with her own once again. "I need to know that I can trust you, I don't want to dive into a relationship not knowing that you aren't sincere or that you're hiding something from me, I just won't let that happen to me again."
Bobby let his head fall out of the attractive woman's hands and over the couch. "Zel, this isn't really something I can get into overnight," he confessed. "I mean where do you want me to start. There's nothing in the world that I want more than you to be happy right now, and for the first time I can say that honestly."
"That's a start Bobby," she said, "can you tell me why you force the jokes all the time?"
He covered his face with his hands for a moment before lifting himself to look Zelda in the eye. "Zel, there's just so much to say right now and putting it all together is going to take a lot more than just a few minutes."
"Why?"
"I don't know," he said, frantically trying to come up with a reason in his mind to answer the woman's barrage of questions. "I guess everything really stems from the whole unhappy childhood cliché. You know the mother that loved me probably a little too much and the father that barely could stand me. I've actually felt worthless nearly my entire life. I could never measure up to the old man in his mind; I could never do things good enough, or perfect enough. Around the time I met you I think is when I was really content with life for the first and what it seemed like the last time - I guess living a life that was far away from normal was the route I started for myself a long time ago."
"Why?"
Bobby stared at the woman, "say what?"
"Why is your life so far from normal?" she added to the question.
"Presently?"
"Yes."
Her question caused something in his stomach to knot. "That's not exactly an easy thing to answer."
Zelda dropped her eyes to the fabric of the couch. "Talking things over like this is never an easy thing Bobby."
Drake adjusted himself more comfortably on the couch. Pulling Zelda back into place against his chest as he continues to speak. He searches the girl's apartment to bring up something of a topic for her to talk about, which would hopefully give him time to get away from telling her the things he desperately didn't want to lie to her about. "This might be something a little to much to ask," he said as he locked his eyes on a picture above the bookcase near the window to the rear of the room. "Could you unlock the door?"
"You're not getting out of this that easy."
"Oh no, this is by far something that would never be called easy." Drake said, his eyes fixed to the group photo above the bookcase. "Can I ask you something?"
"Anything you want," she said confidently, "I'm an open book."
"Books are Hanks' deal, I'm a dedicated fan of the Cliff's notes myself," he joked. "But in all seriousness, who's the guy in the picture. You know, the one with the green skin?"
Zelda Clarke looked down again, this time to the carpet on her floor, a disappointed sigh escaped her lungs. "It comes to this already. I knew I shouldn't have invited you over here before I explained some things, it's funny though I was so ready to automatically assume you weren't a bigot."
"I think you misunderstand," Bobby said as he raised her head away from the floor.
"He's my brother."
Bobby can almost hear the pain in her voice; as a sharp pain shot through his own abdomen as he hears the woman tell him her brother is a mutant, "If you want to leave," she continued as a single tear rolls down her cheek, "I'll understand."
Drake lifted her chin once again, kissing her lip a single time and placing her back against the couch to keep her sitting up. "I told you this wasn't going to be easy for me, but I never figured it would be this hard for you either. I'm sorry for bringing that up for you, really I am," he said as he rolled his sleeve past his elbow.
"Zelda, I want you to see something," he told her, bringing his forearm into view.
His eyes close in a careful concentration and his breath becomes visible to the naked eye. His mind tells him quickly of the temperature dropping well below the norms human skin can withstand around his arm, turning it a faint blue. The color drains from his skin, a frost forming around the hairs then over the skin just as it begins to freeze a small sheet over top the top layer of his forearm. Soon after beginning, the air starts to crack, an almost nauseating sound akin to loudly breaking ice in slow succession as his arm starts to completely freeze itself over.
His eyes open after the slowest transformation from skin to ice he's put himself through in years. The cold he needs to keep the skin frozen kept within his body and not affecting the woman he trusts more than most of the people he has lived with for nearly six years. The limb is completely changed into a translucent ice, steam rolls off the appendage into the air but the room is no colder than it was minutes before. "There are a lot of things you can call me Zelda, but I assure you bigot is not one of them."
She watched in a nervous excitement, unsure what to think of what he'd shown her. "That's a lot of honesty Bobby, but why do you want me to unlock the door."
Bobby breathed deep again. "There is a lot that you're going to have to see if I want to keep you around. A lot of things that I lied to you about a long time ago, not because I wanted to mind you, but things you need to see to believe."
"I think you've shown me enough already."
Drake smiled, using his unfrozen hand to hold her face, "I like the idea of keeping you around for a very long time and if you like that idea as well trust me on this one ok?" he asked of the girl, "I'm trusting you a lot more than most people outside my original classmates, but really this is a package deal I can't just show you this half and be content with providing you with only partial answers to who I've become."
"Is everyone in their places?" a spy asked his reinforcements. "Posts. Report."
The distance is a only a few hundred yards as a man in shining armor holds a sword to his waist listening to six identical voices report in on their readiness. His assigned targets within the foreign group of investigators is no longer splintered, though this group of X-Men would be far from being considered as weak their vulnerability lay within the surprise. Without a telepath present to warn them, they would be completely off guard.
"Hold back until you see my signal," the Silver Samurai ordered, "Watch and learn all you can."
"How do you not understand what I've said three times already, Havok?" a former Avenger asked.
"Because this is all too much to believe."
"Believe it blondy," Dr. Reyes snapped her voice into recognition. "At least seventy percent of those corpses were crossly mutated."
"And the other thirty?"
Henry McCoy stood in front of his appointed leader, his enlarged fingers sorting through a notepad full of hastily thrown together notes and observations. "There isn't much either the good doctor or myself can do to find concrete answers with the equipment we brought with us. Specifically on that last thirty percentile."
"Make whatever arrangements you need to. Bring some of that evidence home or wherever you need to and make those concrete answers," Havok told the senior X-Man. "Storm, did you or Jamie find anything else that would suggest sabotage or a trap within the surviving building?"
"Nothing," the weather witch replied. "The explosives seem as though they were placed into service incorrectly, whether on accident or design that will remain to be seen."
"I couldn't piece anything together on the surviving pieces of paper I found either." Jamie confessed.
"Damn," the lead man muttered.
"I told you we wouldn't find anything," Jamie spoke up. "This place was destroyed for a reason, we've established the fact this building belonged to X-Corps, but I don't think we'll find out why exactly it was destroyed, or if those bodies will tell us anything either."
A semi-circle forms around the lead man, as Alex addresses the roles each has played in the failed investigation. "Jamie, is there anything you know about their operating procedures that would take care of a failed attempt at destruction?"
"From what I recall, there is one person that is tasked to take care of each building sections. Those people are the ones responsible for the demolition for security sakes, the individual is responsible for safeguarding and destroying everything," Multiple Man continued with the explanation of X-Corps operating procedures.
"So the only thing we know is this building was destroyed on purpose, and it more than likely belonged to X-Corps," Havok said to himself. "That isn't what I hoped to find here people. Is there anything else you can tell us Jamie?"
"If there is, there is little chance that it will escape your traitorous lips," a booming voice calls from behind the group of X-Men.
A blinding light forms from a ball quickly changing into a mass of human form. Dissipating a residue light away with his sword, the Silver Samurai looks up to his prey, "It is a shame that you've only found so little, though it only proves that our methods work not only in theory but Bishop was right when he told us how to hide things from you."
"Kenchio?" Sunfire breaks his silence with surprise. "What is the meaning of this intrusion?"
"Stop playing the lapdog to the humans Sunfire," the Samurai said bringing his sword to the center of his frame. "Come, join the winning side of the war against the oppressors. Help me remove the tongue of the traitor."
"I cannot do that Kenchio, you know that is not the way to win any sustained fight," Sunfire spat at the silver armored samurai. "I side with the X-Men, not because I am friendly with them but because their cause is the just one."
A swipe of his sword sends the scene exploding with more and more lights akin to the one forming the Samurai. Teleportation devices often employed by the assassin used to grab the moment of surprise from an opponent. Six identical individuals enter the playing field much like the one before, surrounding the stationary group of X-Men, their targets planned for an all out assault. "A pity Shiro, I had hoped you would be like the others that gained their wits about Xavier's idiotic dream."
"X-Men, take defensive maneuvers," Havok started to call out orders his team members are already aware of. "Storm, Sunfire take to the air, everyone else fan-out do not give them a large target."
The Samurai and his reinforcements enclose around the group of X-Men, cutting their options down. "Jamie, do you see what I see?"
"It's kinda hard not to notice them boss."
"Anyway you can re-assimilate these before they become a problem?"
A familiar car drove up to the security gates of the Xavier Mansion. The vehicle is something of a common variety, though the two passengers would be something akin to uncommon. The driver has lived within the walls of the Xavier's mansion off and on for years, while the single passenger has never set foot anywhere near the gigantic house. As Bobby Drake pulled to the gate, typing in his security code, the nervous feeling in his stomach seemed to grow by the minute.
"Are you sure you want to be showing me anything else?" Zelda asked, sharing the anxiety the man next to her felt. "You've done a lot for today you know."
"It's not enough Zel," Bobby told her. "This house is something of a curse for me when it comes getting in the way of things I want, but it also serves as something I just can't live without for some reason. Like you said; you want me to be honest with you, and this is me showing you that I can do that, showing you that I want you around for the long term and not just for show."
Zelda smiled, not knowing what to say to Bobby's words, as they pull into the circular drive in front of the large oak double doors. A bald man sitting in a wheel chair seems to be waiting for them to approach to greet them. "You're not doing something wrong by bringing me here are you?"
"If I was, that man sitting there would have already known about it," Bobby mentioned as Charles Xavier motioned for the two to come inside. Drake takes Zelda's hand as they walk up the steps leading up to the doors. "Zelda Clarke, may I present Professor Charles Xavier, founder of the Xavier's School for the Gifted."
"Pleasure to meet you Ms. Clarke," Xavier extended his hand in greeting. "Bobby seems to think an explanation of sorts is in order for you."
She smiled at the pleasantries of the bald man. "I don't need any kind of explanation Bobby hasn't already given me," Zelda said.
"I'm sure you don't," Xavier laughed away the nervous feeling the woman shows. Making way through the already open doors, Charles makes mention for the two to follow him to the den.
Drake and Zelda take seats next to one another, both visually nervous for their own reasons though Zelda unsure why. "Warren is bringing out some drinks, but before you re-acquaint yourself with Mr. Worthington, I'd like you to know that many things you see in this house will differ from that you have been lead to believe."
Zelda slowly started to show signs of pale skin. The house looks larger from the inside than it would suggest on the external. "I've heard the stories Mr. Xavier," Zelda swallowed hard before she could speak. "None of them sound remotely real, I mean, well some of them yes, but no not all."
"Relax miss Clarke, and call me Charles please," Xavier asked of the woman. "There are some things Bobby wants you to be aware of, though I wish he would have discussed them with me before he drove up to the gate, but there is a trust I feel growing within you two that cannot be false, an honesty of such deserves the answers to continue."
Setting a tray of drinks on the coffee table in front of them, Zelda gets a warm greeting from a man she barely remembers. Taking precautions Warren hides behind a holographic projection of his younger self, unsure of why Bobby brought the girl to the mansion in the first place. "Warren right?" Zelda asked, shaking the hiding mutant's hand.
"Zelda, before we continue to trick you with our illusions and security measures; I want you to know everyone in this house - minus yourself at the present - is a mutant," Charles explains, motioning for Warren to turn off his device showing the blue skin and feathered wings beneath the electronic masking. "As you will be able to discern when some others return from a current crisis in Japan, you are in the home of the X-Men."
<To Be Continued...>
