Brave New World

by Alicia McKenzie

Part Six

Amelia gave the cashier a polite, if tight smile as the woman bagged her groceries, chattering on about the weather and how awful the traffic had been on her way in to work that morning, "because of the construction, don't you know, and why they think it's fair to tie up a main road like that, I'll never know--"

"The mysteries of the public works department," Amelia said in a low voice, and took the last bag of groceries from the woman. "Thank you," she said, before the cashier could launch into another running monologue. "Have a nice day."

As soon as she walked out of the store, pushing the cart, the heat hit her like a slap in the face. The heat wave had set in several days ago and seemed determined to linger, as if it was going to give everyone in the area a taste of midsummer whether they liked it or not. Amelia was just about ready to suggest to Nathan that they leave town for a few days; the mansion had its old-fashioned charm, but it wasn't all that comfortable in this sort of heat. She knew of a nice bed and breakfast in one of the little seaside towns--a place she and Charles had visited, actually.

A thin, bitter smile twisted her mouth as she put the groceries in the car. Charles was still on Muir Island. The last time she'd spoken to him, he'd made a vague comment about returning in a 'week or so' and then proceeded to ramble on for nearly a half-hour about some wondrous gadget that Nathan had included in the shipments to Muir Island. She'd been hard-pressed not to hang up the phone right then and there.

It was a sad day when you heard enthusiasm in your lover's voice and it immediately put you on your guard. Amelia bit her lip as she started the car and drove out of the parking lot, her attention only peripherally on the road. Charles hadn't seem to notice anything amiss on her side of the conversation--or hadn't let on, if he had. She didn't know which she would have preferred.

Maybe I should have asked him to come home, to see what he would have said. Normally she looked down on women who tried anything resembling the 'if you really loved me' tactic, but part of her couldn't help but think Charles's response would have been--enlightening. Besides, it wasn't as if she didn't have a perfectly good reason to want him back here in Westchester. Nathan was worrying her these last few days. Ever since their argument and the staggeringly awkward conversation that had followed it, he'd been withdrawn, almost completely unresponsive. He'd been working nonstop, installing the technology in the sub-levels. Hardly eating, barely sleeping, not leaving the basement--he hadn't said ten words to her in the past two days. She didn't know what to do.

If he'd been angry at her, that would have been one thing. She could have dealt with that, but she didn't know what the hell to do with him when he was in this sort of state. Charles was the telepath, the expert in psychology. All Amelia could do was try and stumble through.

She was at the red light almost before she knew it, and had to hit the brakes a little too hard to stop in time. The van behind her nearly hit her, and Amelia scowled into the mirror. "Asshole," she muttered, and proceeded when the light turned green again.

Five minutes later, she realized the van was still there. Not tailgating nearly so noticeably, but something about it was bothering her. She'd made three turns, one onto a side street, so the idea that the same car would still be right behind her seemed a little unlikely. Coincidence, she thought, eyeing the van in the mirror a little warily. Charles was always complaining she had a suspicious mind, but she didn't intend to lose that characteristic just because he teased her about it. It had kept her safe more often than she liked to remember.

Maybe she'd do a few more errands while she was in town, rather than heading back out to the mansion right away.

***

It was almost finished. Initially it had been a--gymnasium, that was the word, Nathan thought distantly, sliding out from beneath the console and sitting up. A training room for the students Charles was planning to gather, where they could work on honing their powers and maintaining their physical fitness. It would still serve that purpose, more or less, it would just do so more--efficiently.

The corner of Nathan's mouth quirked upwards in a humorless smile as he reached for his water bottle. It had been a more challenging project than he'd expected, in the end. The technology itself wasn't particularly complex - holographic projectors of this type had been around for a thousand years before his time - but devising a system where dozens of them functioned together, to produce total immersion in the holographic environment, had been more difficult. He'd been fine-tuning the control systems for days.

Nathan rose, staring out through the plasglass window into the darkness of the seemingly empty room below. This was an--interface booth, a vital part of the room's design. This was where Charles would sit, controlling the training programs and assessing the performance of his students. The holographic library would be as large as he cared to make it; Nathan had built in ample storage capacity. Charles would be able to expose the students to countless different possible situations, test their reactions to various stimuli.

It would be quite--efficient. With a short, bitter laugh, Nathan leaned forward against the console, wanting, just for a moment, to put his fist right through it. Wanting it so badly that he could almost taste it.

He was building tools to train children for a war. Children. Like he'd been, when he'd been swept up as a conscript in the Crestcoast sweeps and transported to Pan-Africa to fight in the Veldt War. He wasn't sure what faction he'd fought for, although he remembered the green banners and still had the unhappy suspicion that it had been the Canaanites.

He didn't even know why that particular war had taken place. He'd never been able to find out, not in all the years since. The Veldt War had gone down in the official histories as just one more regional conflict in the years of civil war that had followed Apocalypse's death. When it had ended, he'd been one of a handful of survivors out of an army that had numbered ten thousand soldiers, most of which had been conscripts, just like him.

The day he'd walked out into the desert with what few supplies he could salvage from that last battlefield, he hadn't yet turned fourteen years old.

The girl Jean's face drifted through his mind, and Nathan straightened, clenching his hands into fists to still their shaking. Would Charles teach her to fight? Would she become a good little soldier?

The anger inside him swelled, but twisted at the same time, reflecting right back at him, laced with mortification at his own selfishness. The rage built so suddenly that it had to go somewhere. Nathan snarled a curse, and the tool kit went flying, scattering its contents everywhere as he lashed out with his telekinesis.

Selfish--self-indulgent--disgusting. Disgusting . Nathan reeled away from the console, steadying himself with a hand against the wall. As if his flonqing conscience or his peace of mind meant anything. What right did he have to feel, in any of this? Cold, hard logic--ruthless necessity. That was what ruled his life now.

Besides. This was going to happen whether he wanted it to or not. Nathan leaned his forehead against the wall and focused on trying to slow his breathing. Inevitable, all of it was inevitable. The war was coming, and these children would be caught up in it, no matter what.

Wouldn't it be--better for them if they were prepared? If they knew how to defend himself?

But that's not what Charles is doing! a tiny, indignant part of him protested. There was nothing practical about what Charles was planning. He was a dreamer, an idealist. He wasn't going to train these children to defend themselves and their loved ones, he was planning to recruit them for a crusade.

A crusade. There'd been a book about the crusades in the mansion's library. Nathan remembered it quite well.

It had talked about a children's crusade, too.

It hadn't ended well.

Straightening, he gave the console and the room below a final bitter look, and strode out the door. He'd finish his adjustments later. Amelia was safely out of the house, so he could go up to the kitchen and get some food, without having to see her.

Nathan shook his head, something almost like regret creeping in to replace the anger. She didn't deserve to be ignored, but he wasn't going to drag her into his problems. He'd already given away too much with that outburst of his a few days ago. She'd seen things he'd never intended for anyone to see, things he himself wasn't ready to face.

Besides, Charles needed to come home and sort things out with her before she gave up on him. The man was being a fool, imagining he could ignore the problem and have it go away--

Nathan stopped, all thoughts of Charles and Amelia and his own flonqing troubled soul vanishing instantly.

There was someone else in the mansion. Several someones. He could sense them, but only vaguely. His telepathy had never been reliable at distance, so he couldn't tell who they were, or where exactly within the mansion. But he knew the taste of a mind with bad intentions.

Oath. And he didn't have a weapon. Charles had insisted he store his, while he was here, and they were in his room, better than three floors and the length of the house away. Cursing, Nathan whirled and ran back down the hall towards the interface booth. Some of his tools worked just as well as weapons--the cutting laser, in particular.

The thought-traces didn't seem to be getting any closer. They were so murky, as if they were--shielded? He couldn't be sure what they were after. If they'd been watching the house at all, they would have realized Charles wasn't here, and that Amelia was out.

So possibly, something in the house. Or him. The thought chilled him. Canaanites wouldn't have followed him back, they had no functional Tinex.

Stryfe might have. But Stryfe would have announced his presence, surely. The Chaos-Bringer had never been renowned for his subtlety.

Nathan got back into the interface booth and searched swiftly through his scattered tools, finding the cutting laser and a utility knife. Good enough for now, he thought, heading back out into the hall. He had to stay mobile, assess the situation.

The lights flickered and went out, and Nathan stopped, then proceeded again, more cautiously. The emergency access was just at the end of the hall--

There was something in the air. Smelled like--rotted fruit, almost, he thought absently, and stumbled as a wave of dizziness hit him.

The realization hit just as suddenly. Gas. It was gas. Coming in through the ventilation system--they knew he was here, where he was. He had to get off this level before it was too late.

Coughing, fighting growing wooziness, he staggered to the end of the hall and started to wrestle the hatch open. But his coordination was going, and he couldn't seem to get any air.

In the end, he managed to get the hatch half-open before he passed out.

***

Her expression tightening, Moira turned away from Charles as he closed his eyes and relaxed in his chair, visibly concentrating. That was a novel way to end an argument, she thought angrily, slipping from the study and closing the door behind her.

They'd caught the first flight back to the States, in response to Amelia's frantic call for help. She'd come back to the mansion after doing some grocery-shopping, in time to see a group of strangers loading an unconscious Nathan into some sort of aircraft. Though she'd tried to intervene and had her powers turned back on her somehow in the process, knocking her senseless, she'd been quite clear on what she'd seen.

Moira took a deep breath, wondering bleakly whether it would be terribly stereotypical to find Amelia and offer to make them both some tea. What she felt like she needed was coffee, but she knew better than that, at a time like this.

"Ach, lad," she murmured softly. "What's happened to ye?" It didn't surprise her that someone had come after him, but the fact that they'd flown off to wherever, rather than vanishing into thin air or some such thing--that, to her, sounded like someone from this time, rather than other time-travelers.

Which was both good and bad. At least if he was still in this time, they had a chance of finding him. Unfortunately, they had no idea where to look, and with Nathan's shields the way they were, Charles' telepathic search wasn't liable to bear fruit, either.

Amelia was sitting on the stairs in the front foyer, her head in her hands, and Moira felt her customary unease around the woman fade a little. They'd never be friends, but to do anything but respond to her obvious distress would be heartless.

"Are ye all right?" she asked, softly but firmly. Amelia hadn't let her examine her, when she and Charles had arrived. Peculiar behaviour, for a nurse who should know better, but Moira had always suspected Amelia had experiences in her past that made her wary of human doctors probing for information about her mutant abilities.

Amelia lifted her head and glared at Moira. Her eyes were reddened, and there were dark circles beneath them. She looked terrible. "Leave me alone, MacTaggart. I'm not in the mood."

Moira sighed, and sat down beside her on the stairs. The other woman shifted, clearly wanting to get up and leave, but just as unwilling to give Moira the satisfaction. Moira smiled, almost despite herself. *Charles and his attraction to stubborn women,* she thought ruefully.

"I should never have left him," Amelia said abruptly.

Moira sighed. "Ye could not have done much--"

"Oh, I couldn't have? Remember, I don't have to breathe if I don't want to, Moira," Amelia snapped, shifting again, almost restlessly. "I could have teleported us both to someplace safe and gotten in touch with you and Charles--"

Moira pursed her lips. "Ye remember Nathan's little saying?" she asked. "'What is, is'?"

Amelia glared at her again. "Oh, that helps. Enormously. You must have worked for years on that bedside manner."

"Do ye have to think to come up with things like that?" Moira asked wryly. "Or do th' witty retorts just come naturally?" Amelia bit her lip, looking away, and Moira sighed. "I'm sorry, Amelia. Pot calling kettle black, ye might say." She took a deep breath, squaring her shoulders. "I'm worried about him too."

"I know," Amelia muttered. "I think he's one of the few things we agree on."

***

He was back in the cell, under the Canaanite citadel. Or--no, that wasn't it. It was the telepath's chamber aboard Haight's command ship, and he was strapped to a table while the tribune's psions peeled away his shields, so that they could remake his mind and turn him into a penitent figurehead, seeking redemption for all the crimes he'd committed against the Canaanite Order.

Only there was just one figure there, and that didn't make any sense. Stryfe, come to gloat? But the figure wasn't wearing silver armor that hurt his eyes with its brightness, so it couldn't be Stryfe. Besides, Stryfe had never been there while Haight's telepaths worked. They'd laughed about that, Nathan remembered. About--deja vu, and Stryfe not wanting to watch. It had been something to cling to, wondering what they meant, while they tore at his mind.

But there wasn't anyone trying to get past his shields this time. Just one dark figure with a strange face, like--a white mask, something he remembered from one of Charles' books. Only those masks had a black tear on the cheek, not a red diamond on the forehead.

And the mask didn't look sad, but neutral. Maybe a little curious. It leaned over him, and Nathan flinched at a sudden, sharp pain in his arm. The mask moved out of view, and Nathan listened, trying to make sense of the noise in the background. A--hum, some kind of machinery. The air was cool. Chemical smell.

Focusing on anything was hard. He could feel the drugs in his system, interfering with his thoughts. If he could just--think, sort out where he was, what had happened--

"Very interesting," a voice said from the direction the mask had gone. "A full first degree relative to my young Mr. Summers. This certainly bears further investigation."

Summers. The name teased at his mind, but he couldn't remember--it was familiar somehow, but everything was so hazy.

"I think," the mask said, leaning over again, "that it's time to find out where you came from."

The first poke at his shields was almost gentle.

It didn't stay that way for long.

***

Charles rubbed at his eyes and swallowed, trying to ignore both the building headache and how dry his throat was. His hands were shaking slightly as he wheeled himself over to the side table and poured himself a glass of water. The clock on the mantel told him it was well past eight at night.

He hadn't realized so much time had gone by while he'd been searching the astral plane for any trace of Nathan. A futile effort, of course, and he should have realized that from the beginning. Considering that he couldn't access Nathan's mind even under normal circumstances, the chances of finding him, at a distance - and it could be a very great distance indeed, given how long it had taken him and Moira to get back here - had been minuscule, at best.

But he'd had to try. The only other option was to involve some of his contacts in other areas, to see if they had any information, but he was loathe to do that. His network was a fragile thing at this point; if he called on it prematurely, he could be risking the stability of his 'underground', not to mention the safety of his operatives.

This was all happening too fast. Had he precipitated this, by not doing more to hide Nathan's presence here? The nature of the incident - Moira had detected the residue of a commonly used sedative gas in the ventilation system, and the plane Amelia had described, though sophisticated, sounded very much like it belonged in this century - suggested that it had been an act by someone from this time, rather than Nathan's own, and there were plenty of suspects. The government and several other groups had already displayed intense interest in mutants with psionic abilities.

But Charles thought he'd almost prefer that to the possibility that someone in this time had discovered Nathan was from elsewhen. Nathan's origin, the technology and information to which he had access, merely made him an even more valuable commodity. Charles felt his jaw clench in revulsion at his own phrasing, but it was all too accurate.

He wondered, suddenly and bleakly, how well Nathan might stand up to protracted interrogation. Physically, he was much stronger than he'd been upon his arrival in this century, but mentally--

You know too much, Charles, that's the problem, he told himself, moving towards the door. He needed to review Amelia's memories of what she'd seen, to see if he'd overlooked some potentially valuable bit of information. Sometimes, the most inconsequential details turned out to be the key. I've seen too many cases already where mutants are being exploited for what they are. Too many horror stories.

The disturbing truth was that he would undoubtedly see more. It wasn't a trend that was going to arrest itself, not without intervention--

The phone rang. It took Charles a moment to register that it was the phone on his desk, the one attached to his private line, rather than the mansion's main phone line.

Frowning, he wheeled himself back to the desk and picked it up. "Hello?" he said into the receiver.

There was a moment's silence, and then a soft, humorless laugh in a familar, accented voice. "Charles."

His breath caught in his throat, but Charles took a deep breath and went on in as calm a voice as he could manage.

"Erik."

[next part]

alicia's stories | [ARCHIVE] | comicfic.net