Thirteen

by Indigo

The wave was insidious in its execution -- slowly unwinding the spiralling strands of deoxyribonucleaic acid little by little, so it seemed more of a flaw, an imperfection, or a simple function of fatigue on the part of the New Man.

En Sabah Nur, ancient, wizened, and yet young, woke from a dreamless sleep, and had to slam his eyes shut again against the luminous crimson beams that burst forth from his corneas. Swearing under his breath in ancient tongues long forgotten, he concentrated, seeking to commune with that power he had for millennia commanded -- to place his body back under his command...to arrange the cells in the manner that he would have them.

But ...nothing... happened.

Nur concentrated until he imagined he could feel tiny capillaries bursting behind his eyes and in his forebrain. But nothing happened.

He muttered under his breath that Summers was *gone* and that there was no possible way he could be thwarting Apocalypse's design -- that controlling the optic blasts was simply a matter of exerting his strength over his own will and body.

Before long, though --it became a moot point, because the optic blasts were gone as well.

Enraged and disbelieving, Nur raced to his mirror, and stared into it. The single eye he had given himself in mocking tribute to the X-Man Cyclops was gone -- replaced by a pair of nascent, blue, altogether entirely *human* eyes.

"What is the meaning of this?" Nur asked of the echoing halls around him. Could the Twelve have finally found some way to thwart him, to take back what he had stolen from them? He staggered, still reeling, to his old blue and silver Celestial armor. It would serve as protection for his frail body, as it had served to protect the frail body before this one. And then -- the retribution of Apocalypse would be terrible to behold. The wrath of Apocalypse would be visited without mercy on what fool dared take responsibility for this situation.

En Sabah Nur refused to admit that his hands were shaking. After five thousand years, he was intimately in touch with his body's every nuance. What his body told him now is that the vast energy that had come from his merging with Summers was fading, dwindling, vanishing. What he

understood from communing with his own form was that he was weakening...attenuating...fading. His strength -- all that mattered to him above all else -- was leaving him.

He had to know why.

S E Z....A R C J...H. His fingers were thick and ungainly. Had he become so unused to his armor already? He threw aside the gauntlets, momentarily forgetting in his fervor to discover the source of his torment that his ungloved hands were frail and thin by comparison to the armor.

>...Searching

>...Searching

>...Searching

>[] ...source found....

News articles, some of his hidden cameras, and his own network of surveillance painted him a picture that clutched his heart in an icy fist of terror, but surged his blood into seething with rage.

There were no more mutants on the face of the earth. None. Something had come down from the sky and wiped away the homo sapiens superior genome. Someething had rendered En Sabah Nur's people -- the strong -- just like the rest of the mewling, pathetic humans that so polluted the planet he would rule.

Those who called themselves Avengers had members mysteriously go on leave. His perpetual adversaries, the X-Men, were nothing but human chattel themselves, now. And he, Apocalypse? He was the same as they!

Human?

Weak.

Human.

Flawed.

Human.

What did that mean, then, for his dream? What good was his mandate of "Survival of the Fittest" if the playing field had been forcibly leveled?

~What, indeed, Nur?~

Nur shook his head, donned his gauntlets again, and stomped back to his bedchamber. The computers told him nothing that would be of assistance, save that the signal came from space.

~Space? No mutants are hanging out in space. Even Magneto's on earth, these days, ruling Genosha. Who has a space program? Lowly little humans.~

Apocalypse's own resources were no longer concentrated on anything beyond the planet. It was hard for him to think. The constant readjustments of his body were distracting, painful. He had endured pain before, and he would triumph over this tribulation as well. It was inevitable. If it was a cosmic event, it was as simple as waiting out the alignment of the planets.

~And what if it's something of man's design, Nur? What then?~

The thoughts kept coming, unbidden, into his mind, sarcastic and mocking in their gentleness and apparent innocence. He shook off the notion. If it was an event of man's design, then someone would handle this as well. His people, the mutants, the strong -- they would not brook being taken down to the level of the beasts crawling on their bellies in the dirt. If it were an unnatural thing that did this to him, his kind would rectify it.

~Really? Are you sure? Some mutants would be perfectly happy human. Some mutants would be content to have no megalomaniac enemies to fight. Many would be thrilled to have normal lives, free of the hatred of the

rest of the world. ~

"Then they are WEAK and should DIE with the chattel as BEFITS their WEAKNESS!" Nur bellowed, whirling, as if the thought had come from outside him. His gauntleted fist smashed a hole in the stone wall beside him.

~Are you *really* of the strong, En Sabah Nur?~

"I am APOCALYPSE!" His amplified voice rumbled up and down the corridors of his sanctum. "ONLY THE STRONG SHALL SURVIVE!"

~We'll see. The X-Men won't let this stop them. Powers or no powers, they're still out there. And if they have any sense, they'll strike now while you can't fight back.~

Nur smiled at this. "Let them come. We shall see, then, if they are strong even in this condition. I have my armor. My technology. My sanctum. I can hold them off, crush them like insects, tear them limb from limb. What do they have?"

The rambling part of his subconscious had no reply, and Nur nodded in satisfaction.

Then, the thought wafted through his skull: ~They have each other.~

Nur snorted, and laughed derisively. "Love? Brotherhood? These things will not serve them against me."

~What of Sinister?~

"Essex? He has failed me! He is useless!" The heavy metal footfalls of Apocalypse's boots echoed as he paced his chambers.

~And he's not a mutant. He hasn't lost any powers.~

Apocalypse froze, paralyzed by this thought. "My own minion, turning against me?" He considered. Sinister had long and long been trying to destroy him. The Greys, the ones called Nate and Cable were his weapons. But now, if his sources were correct -- they too were nothing more than normal men with only the abilities of normal men. And as such, posed him no threat. He shrugged, unworried.

But in the back of his mind, a granular fragment of concern niggled like an ember that refused to be smothered.

* * * * *

Two weeks later:

Without his armor, Nur dared not venture to the surface. Without his power, he dared not attempt to use the armor for more than a brief handful of moments. It was heavy and he tired easily. It still possessed much of its futuristic Celestial abilities, but without the ability to rearrange his molecules, he could not access more than the most rudimentary of functions.

And if Apocalypse showed his face in the world of man -- and man put together that mutants were no more -- they would strike without mercy to eliminate the blight of Apocalypse from their world. Strong or not, he would not survive. They would bring to bear every weapon they had, and without his resources he had no way to defend himself except -- however distasteful -- to hide.

So far, the infernal X-Men had made no attempt to engage him in battle either. What little he could glean of the outside world told him that they were disappointing him. There were no immediate attempts being made to discover what had devolved the homo superior race to mere homo sapiens.

He spent his days eating and drinking to keep the strength of his merely human body up. Nights, when it was cool, he would go out and take long runs across the desert floor, suffering the scouring touch of windblown sand. "If I must be human, I will still be the strongest there is." The pale eye of the moon watched his exertions, silent and unjudgemental, but the voice of dissention in his head grew stronger.

~Hulk is the strongest one there is, and he's not a mutant.~

The niggling thoughts had not gone away in all this time. Apocalypse was certain it was just old insecurities he had not felt in five thousand years coming to the fore. In five thousand years, he had not been this powerless. He dared not contact his minions, lest they see the slowness of his motions and sense weakness. Jackals would sense weakness and go for his throat. His Dark Riders, his Horsemen -- they'd all be able to tell. He had chosen them, made them so that they could sense weakness, the better to destroy it utterly.

~Then there's Captain Marvel. The Fantastic Four. The New Warriors. Spider-Man. Dr. Strange. What makes you think former mutants are all you need fear? You could be taken down with an adamantium sawblade. You could be taken down with a laser. You could be taken down with a *bullet.* You're only human, Nur. You're only human.~

His heart hammered hard in his chest, and his lungs burned for a deep breath, but Nur pushed his body all the harder, counting his steps to drown out the stream of doubt-inducing babble his hindbrain seemed intent on spewing upon him -- all in the most reasonable voice.

* * * * *

...The pale eye of the moon was veiled under a curtain of haze red as blood. The Hunter's Moon. Its light cast all Egypt in crimson relief. No matter how many times or how hard Nur forced himself to blink his eyes, the scarlet tint permeated everything before him. Everything.

...Hoofbeats kicked clouds of sand up in the distance, and Nur felt his pulse quicken. His muscles, achy and sore from the constant punishment he inflicted on himsef, were slow to respond from the sluggishness of his repose. Sleep was for the week, yet his human body needed it now.

There was no choice.

...He rose, on shaking legs that cramped from fatigue toxins and disturbed rest. Nur staggered, fumbling toward the armor. Apocalypse loomed above him -- the outward appearance of who he still insisted he was. Its cavities opened for him and he struggled into it, arms heavy.

...The sound of engines were carried to his ears on the sirocco, in rhythmic counterpoint to the riding beasts. Voices were audible as well. Shouts of command.

..."Let them come, then," Nur spat through lips gone dry. "I will fight them and I will crush them."

...But they simply stopped, one hundred yards from him, where he stood before his monolith. They stood under the light of the red moon, and stared with expressions ranging from amusement to pity to contempt.

..."DO NOT MOCK ME! I AM EN SABAH NUR! I AM APOCALYPSE!" He raised his fist and strode forward, ready to wade into battle.

* * * * *

Nur sat up in bed, covered with a thick sheen of sweat. The sheets were tangled around his legs, and his pillows had been thrown across the room.

"Nightmare, I presume?" asked a deep, mellifluous bass voice from the shadows.

"Who dares--?"

"Did you think yourself safe from your enemies and your lackeys, Apocalypse?" The voice whispered almost contemptuously. Footfalls followed the inquiry. "Did you believe yourself safe? Are you really of the strong if your security is so feeble?"

Three pinpoints of red were visible in the darkness. "Your technology, your vaunted stolen trove of treasures avails you of *nothing* now that you lack your ability to manipulate it." Laughter, liquid and mocking, filled the room. A rustle of cloth. "Look around you -- everything was built for Apocalypse the giant! Everything accessorized for

Apocalypse the strong! And who are you now?"

Sinister stepped forward, shark-pointed teeth bared in a pitiless rictus. "Nur. Nur the weak. And who am I?"

"Sinister," Nur hissed, rising to his feet nonetheless.

The mad geneticist formerly known as Nathaniel Essex nodded. "I am what you made me. Thanks to you -- I suffered no loss of ability when this event occurred." He snaked one long arm out and clasped En Sabah Nur about the throat. The other darted across the bedchamber and knocked over the empty Apocalypse armor. It wobbled on its feet, then collapsed to the floor in one piece, ringing hollowly against the stone. "My weapons, my warriors may be gone, but now, only Sinister remains. And it would appear that I alone am enough."

"Now, by your own hand, you die." Sinister's eyes flashed, or seemed to -- and he let fly with a mental attack that flayed Nur's psyche like a thousand acid needles.

Nur clenched his teeth, and sweat beaded on his forehead and upper lip. He knew what Sinister wanted; Sinister wanted him to scream and beg. Sinister wanted him to mewl piteously. He would not give that satisfaction. "Do...your...worst..." he rasped, expecting his vision to haze and his nose to run with blood as the telepathic onslaught continued.

But to his amazement, after the initial mind-shredding wave of pain, he found Sinister's attacks somehow ... blunted. His eyes swam and it was like lifting wet bags of sand to move, but he was not done yet. His fingers found purchase on Sinister's, and pulled feebly. No strength to pry him loose, but his windpipe wasn't crushed yet. Sinister was toying with him!

Sinister mused pensively. "Destroying you would be a service to the world. Yet, there is so much I could learn from you."

Nur struggled and thrashed in Sinister's unbreakable grasp. He nodded, desperate for any opportunity to fight, to strike back at his former lackey. If he had to encourage Sinister's scientific curiosity, so be it. Strength was not all of the physical. Strength was in the cunning to defeat an enemy through any means possible. Strength was in the will to remain alive and grow stronger to take vengeance.

~He'll dissect you, Nur. Unless you luck up and the powers come back, you'll be screaming on his vivisection table by dawn. Better run.~

The thought rankled and filled his mouth with bitter bile, but he knew the reasonable voice that usually plagued his thoughts was right. The pyramid was riddled with escape tunnels and secret passages -- that Ozymandias and his other thralls could come and go in secret without disturbing him. Now, though, they were his only hope of escaping death. He held his breath, waiting for Sinister to slacken his grip, cursing himself inwardly for the hubris that only allowed him to manipulate his machinery as the giant.

The lessening of the pressure on Nur's mind indicated Sinister was about as distracted as he was likely to become. He seized his only opportunity, and reached forward. Hooking his right index finger like a talon, he jabbed hard into Sinister's eyesocket, tugged, and pulled.

As the man who still thought of himself as Apocalypse had hoped, the surprise, if not the pain, made Sinsiter relinquish his hold. Nur fell to hands and knees, scrabbled to his feet, and ran. In this, at least, he mused bitterly, the exercises he had forced upon himself were serving him well.

~Run!~

Tiny detonations of pain blossomed behind Nur's eyes -- Sinister retaliating with psionics. Tiny cerebral hemorrhages, he supposed, but did not permit that knowledge to stagger him.

~You have to have some traps in here for the unwary, the weak. Use them!~

For the first time in his multi-millennial recollection, with the deliberate, slow stride of Sinister behind him -- like he had all the time in the world -- En Sabah Nur was afraid.

Nur's feet slapped on the cold stone, skidding on sand. His hands found the levers to set traps almost as if he wasn't thinking about it himself. He could hear the machinery deep in the bowels of the pyramid, moving into place. The grind of stone, the whine of metal were distant faint noises at best, but it was *his* pyramid -- his. And ...

~That gives you home court advantage.~

He didn't stop to think how it was that Sinister wasn't invading his thoughts again. He thanked providence, fate, or whatever it was that allowed him this respite.

~Yeah, well, it won't last, so move it.~

"How primitive. How quaint." The metallic *shrinnnng* of blades sliced through Sinister in two places. He simply oozed around them and reformed his malleable body, continuing unperturbed.

~You would have had to keep the armor in the bedroom rather than someplace where you could've got to it in an emergency. Smart.~

The voice was mocking him again. He dismissed its jibes as his subconscious urging him to flee to safety faster. Feet in front of him, a pair of thickly-spiked walls were closing in with inexorable speed. Trusting that he had conditioned his human body to peak, he dove between them.

Sinister, confident and certain that he was beyond such concerns, followed -- and the spiked walls slammed shut. To his credit, Sinister did not scream either. Nur smiled; he had trained his old servant well. The strong do not scream, even when their vital organs are punctured.

~Do something! He's going to reform his body in five seconds!~

Nur leapt for another lever and fell on it with the full weight of his body. The spiked walls retreated toward the sides of the corridor, dragging with them Sinister's body -- stretching the pallid horror of a man like taffy. His face was contorted, both from the spikes having impaled him through the head, and from his own concentration at attempting to reconfigure himself.

From the ceiling, a heavy stone dropped with an audible, final thud that drowned out the otherwise sickening squelch of Sinister's skull being crushed beneath it. His hand, reaching out of the trap for Nur, quavered, grasped spastically at empty air, then fell still.

Nur shuddered with adrenaline reaction as he walked up and dipped a bare toe in the brackish puddle of grey matter and blood. "The Strong will out."

At the pit of his stomach he felt queasy, but the strong do not throw up at the sight of blood and entrails.

Nur staggered back to his bedchamber, and stopped short. Now it was clear why Sinister had taken his time pursuing him once he'd escaped. Essex had been thorough. While he had indulged his own weak, human lust for vengeance, the part of him that had served Apocalypse had done its job thoroughly. What parts of his armor were not being sucked off randomly into Sinister's tesseeracts had explosives leading up to them. What parts of his console were not also wired to bombs had nanites eating them away visibly. And on the floor, scuttling toward him, were a dozen scorpions. ~You could be taken down with a laser. You can be taken down with a *bullet.*

~Yeah, scorpions would work too.~ The subconscious voice Nur had come to think of as his sense of self-preservation urged him once more to ~Run!~

The passage leading to his supplies was already blocked off by nanites and poisonous creatures. His helmet was the only part of his armor he could reach, so he dove for it, donned it, and bolted with his bed sheets and a pair of pants -- all he could grab before Sinister's final solution encroached on him entirely.

* * * * *

Fifteen minutes saw Nur racing out the mouth of his pyramid. Behind him, the sand shook and rumbled as the pyramid crumbled -- destroyed from its heart outward.

But he had survived Sinister's every attempt to annihilate him, and he had survived intact. Now, the task that lay before him was to find shelter and food -- or it would be an ignominious death through the simple rigors that the desert would exact from his human body.

He began walking, wrapped in only his bed sheets against the merciless desert wind. Sunrise was not far off by the angle of the stars, and he dared not be out in the open when daylight came.

* * * * *

Daylight came, inevitably as such things in the world come. With it, came dry, pounding heat. Nur's body began to dehydrate.

Night came, and with it, the chill.

Day followed, and brought with it the blinding heat and the hot sand.

Night returned, and chilled Nur to the bone. Lizards made meager repast. Cactus prevented dehydration from the barest of margins, although his hands were blooded from the needles.

Daybreak heralded a new day in which Nur staggered slowly. His meager sheets were tattered, shredded and destroyed by the merciless wind. His body was already thinning.

* * * * *

Night came -- and Nur had lost track of how many -- with it, shooting stars that fell in the wrong direction. Nur dismissed them as hallucinations. Strong or not, he had not expected to be forced from his pyramid shelter before his powers had returned.

It was nothing of the kind. Miles up into the night sky, the X-Men had found the source of the microwaved signal that had devolved homo superior down to homo sapiens, and gone to stop it -- lest the entire world become a unified race of hideous, deformed, mutates.

* * * * *

Nur slept fitfully, in the dubious shelter of sand dunes and palm trees. Something awoke him and he fell into a battle stance even before sleep had fully left him. There were no desert predators, no insects or threats. So why was he feeling the danger?

~Because the X-Men have saved the day. That strong enough for you, monster?~

Nur frowned, furrowing his brow. The voice wasn't mocking anymore. It wasn't reasonable. It was -- triumphant. He didn't answer the voice like he usually did, for once shaken of his certainty.

~Don't you feel it? Stronger?~

It was true. A reversing of the weakness he felt so many weeks ago. Was the event ending? Whatever it was that had taken him down to the level of mere mortals...?

~And you, old man, have pushed yourself too hard. Far too hard. Being obsessed with being strong has made you use yourself up. There's nothing left for you to fight with. It took one more than the Twelve to defeat you -- we just needed to wait for you to help us.~

"You! NO!"

~Yes.~

The New Man opened his eyes and a burst of crimson energy burst forth from his corneas, bright and clear and powerful from the constant, strong inundation of sunlight his body had received. He smiled, tilted his head, and turned sharply. The optic blast severed a palm tree and it fell neatly. He turned his gaze and felled another tree. And another.

When he was content he had felled enough trees to shelter himself for the night, he blinked -- and the beams stopped. The remaking of the New Man's body or the merge months ago had repaired the damage.

~How? You were obliterated!~

"I've survived being stabbed on the astral plane." The grin of Jason Wyngarde as he lunged with his sword flickered through Nur's memory.

"I've survived being shipwrecked. I've survived the death of someone with whom I'm psionically linked in rapport." The memory of a red-haired woman vaporizing herself on the moon scrolled lazily through Nur's mind. "I've survived being mind controlled, beaten, starved, lost in space, and being struck by inter-dimensional lightning, Did you really think a delusional old man would really be able to destroy me so completely? Now who's of the strong, Nur? Now who's of the strong?"

Scott Summers, who had been psi-trained by Professor Xavier and Jean Grey had sufficient mental resources that he could shove the feebly protesting Apocalypse psyche into a compartment of his head and keep him there for safekeeping until Phoenix could find a way to separate the two of them.

Then he settled down in his little lean-to and made himself as comfortable as possible. It would be a long trip back to civilization, and a long story to tell his friends and family.

He needed to conserve his strength.

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