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Another Phase/Jilly W
Sorry, meant to add this to the bottom of the rest of the fic, but clicked the wrong button
Anyway... added another section to this, to cover Power Play. Time Squared should follow on shortly now I've got Future Flawed out of my system
****
Thursday
Someone up there hates me.
Just as I start to think I’m finally getting back on top of who – or should that be what - I am again, they hurl something else at me. Something more frightening, because it’s completely beyond my control and, until it deigns to give me up, I’m at its mercy.
It was a lousy night – a night of ‘if only’s. If only Adam hadn’t listened to that mystery contact of his, if only we’d been a few minutes earlier – or later – before trying to go in, if only we’d seen the guards before they saw us, if only my natural instinct hadn’t been to phase through the hanger wall as a way of giving myself time to recover from that crack on the skull, if only… But it all happened, and I’m left with a killer headache, sore kidneys and a potential death sentence tangled up in my molecules.
I wasn’t really joking when I said it would teach me to practice holding my breath. It’s something I know I should do more of, given how much can depend on me keeping massed or phased a few extra seconds sometimes – particularly in recent months – and as Adam said, if I’d actually had to reform in there and inhaled that nerve gas, it could have been worse. Not that it feels that way right now. Because right now holding my breath is the last thing I should be doing, not if I want to avoid a repeat of what happened in the lab. And I so don’t want to do that again.
It wasn’t just one of the scariest experiences of my life – right up there on a par with when I discovered I was a mutant in the first place. It was so shockingly fast, so unexpected, so deep-rooted in its inception that it left me powerless to counter it initially. And after all the work I’ve put in learning to adjust and maintain my density in instant response to whatever threat rears its head, to protect myself and whoever else I’m responsible for, it hit hard to find that even when I’m in supposedly invulnerable mode I could be taken down by something I couldn’t even see.
And it’s just me. Not like when that virus was taking us all out, killing mutants indiscriminately. No, this one’s all mine.
Adam says the nerve gas molecules bonding with mine should work their way out in due course, but he’s giving no guarantees and no time frame on that. And given my spectacular display of at least one of those ‘symptoms of contamination’ he’d said we needed to be guarding against, I’m not really looking forward to the wait. I’m not sure if it’s my imagination or not, but I’ve got this weird kind of itchy tingling feeling, sort of like having your skin crawling, only on the inside where you can’t get at it to scratch. And the headache – did I mention the headache? It’s like the worst hangover ever, without the fun of getting loaded in the first place.
I think Adam has a lead on the ones who stole that laser weapon out from under us, the ones who were responsible for the gas, and I for one am looking forward to getting some payback.
Tomorrow, though. First I need to sleep this off…
****
Friday
I just watched two people die.
Two human beings vaporised by forces almost too powerful to imagine. One split second they were standing there and the next Pouf! – nothing but scorch-marks and the incongruous but oddly evocative set of dog-tags, a reminder of the purported reason for today’s whole charade.
And you know what? I didn’t care. Not at all. Not then. Then, I was too angry at how close they’d come to getting away with it. Too angry at how they played us – me. Used me and my abilities to help them feather their own nests. Abused my trust. Took advantage of my damn stupid naiveté – no other word for it. They - *she* suckered me, and I have only myself to blame for what nearly happened afterwards. For putting myself in that position in the first place, as I’m sure Adam will be quick to tell me, if I give him the chance…
I thought I was going to die. I sure felt like I was going to die. It had been such a struggle to control the phase in and out of the central core with the Xiraxium, those nerve gas molecules trying so hard to make me tear myself apart that I doubt I’d have been able to get up off the floor anyway without Soph… without that woman’s help. Like I told her, I was completely wiped, what with the way the whole thing drained what was left of my energy reserves, and the pain… well, that didn’t help. But then Gaumont turned up, and she showed her true colours and I realised that I’d been had, big time, so that it didn’t matter anyway.
That’s when the anger started. Which was good. The anger made me risk one more phase, even though my nerves and muscles still had me twitching from the effort it had taken to get myself back together again. Even though I had no idea what was below me and didn’t have enough control left to do anything other than drop through and hope there’d be something to stop me. But then, of course, if I hadn’t she’d have shot me. I haven’t told anyone else, though, that there was a moment there when that prospect seemed preferable to the alternative – the total lottery phasing has become for me right now, the desperate, terrifying, pain-filled battle to retain enough cohesion to make it back one more time instead of dissipating into nothingness. It was short-lived, though – the anger saw to that. The anger couldn’t let them get away with it that easily. And I have to say, if things had ended differently, the anger would definitely have been a better final memory to take to the grave with me than the knowledge I was just a dupe.
Not that there’d have been a grave as such. You can’t bury a bunch of dispersed molecules, can you? But I’d like to think maybe Shal would make sure there was something to mark my existence, somewhere.
Like someone, somewhere will probably do for those two other corpseless casualties. But better them than me, right?
Though I haven’t actually told him in so many words yet, I guess I have Brennan to thank that I’m actually here to write this, for creating the electrical shield that held me like a shroud until I finally won my war with my own body. But the anger is still here, eating away at me. So much so that since we got back I haven’t wanted to let anyone near enough to see it, to question its obvious existence and the cause of it. Haven’t wanted to be forced to explain beyond the sketchiest of descriptions, just sufficient to deflect if not completely avert further query, what happened out there – both at the plant and later on the street – and how I feel about it. Not until I can understand it better myself, anyway.
But now there are other emotions to contend with as well – elements of regret, remorse, horror that I could have just let them die like that when I could have saved them, instead of just massing and protecting myself.
They deserved it, my anger says. They were going to kill me without a second thought once I’d done what they’d lured me there for, jumped through the hoops they held out for me, in my naïve belief I was doing good.
On the other side, though, I now have my sense of right nagging at me, telling me that what I did makes me no better than them. That it’s not my place to pass sentence, play executioner. And I know I should listen to it, even though I’m not ready to yet.
But I didn’t actually kill them. Honestly. They really did do that themselves, in their arrogance and belief in their own superiority and invulnerability.
Nevertheless, I did let it happen.
And I don’t really feel bad about it. Not really, although I know I should, which makes me wonder whether the small twinge of guilt I have is for that and not them.
Does all that make me a murderer?
I don’t know. And I’m too exhausted and sore and hurting right now to care. Maybe things will seem clearer in the morning…
****
Monday
Got some good news today – the nerve gas has cleared my system! So, no more threat hanging over me, wondering if the next time I breathe too deep will push me over the edge, no more tingling itch deep inside that I can never scratch. No reason not to go back to being my good old carefree self again…
The guys were pleased for me, but nowhere near as glad as I was to hear Adam’s all clear. Perhaps now I can let it go, stop worrying about how I’ll react the next time I have to take someone at face value. Stop seeing Gaumont and Sophia in my dreams, re-living their final instant of agony before they simply ceased to be.
The past few days have been a bit of a nightmare, one way or another. After my various disappearing stunts – both the voluntary and the inadvertent – Adam made sure I stayed close to home where he or one of the others could keep an eye on me. Not that I really felt much like going anywhere – too tired, and too much on my mind for that. But it at least gave me plenty of time to think, to try and get a handle on what happened.
I’m not angry any more. Well, most of the time. It’s only occasionally, when I’m looking around for someone other than myself to blame, that the resentment bubbles up inside and re-ignites the rage. But rationally I know there’s no point to it, so I just put the stopper back in and bottle it away.
I hate my rational side, sometimes. It would be so much easier to let emotion and instinct take over, like Shal does. React to situations as they’re happening, get angry, sad, whatever you need so you can deal with them quickly and then move on, instead of analysing them to death before, during and afterwards. Exactly as I’ve been doing, picking through the debris of that whole 24 hours in my mind, wondering what I’d have done differently if I’d had the chance again.
Like staying in Sanctuary and not having gone there at all?
Adam hasn’t actually bawled me out for that. But he’s made it clear in other ways that he’s disappointed in me for doing it. For playing into Gaumont’s hands, putting us all at risk. He doesn’t seem to want to see that I had no choice. That the others were at risk as soon as he sent them in there without me. That if I hadn’t gone willingly - even if it was without a clue as to his real intentions – Gaumont would have used them openly to bring me to him. I just saved him the trouble.
Emma was wrong when she said it was brave, though. I don’t think I had anything remotely heroic in mind when I went in. It was mostly frustration that drove me out of Sanctuary in the first place – at being sidelined on a ‘maybe’, at being kept from doing my job as effectively as I knew I could, at knowing my friends were cut off, in trouble, and not being able to do anything directly to help them.
And Adam’s reaction only made it worse, made me even keener to prove him wrong, show him I knew what I was doing. Which, based on what we understood to be the situation there right then, I did. I really did, whatever he thinks. I got the job done; got the Xiraxium out, prevented a core meltdown. Given a few minutes to get my breath back, I could have gotten it safely out of the building as well – or at least hidden it where Gaumont couldn’t find it. But someone forgot to tell us the ground rules had changed – that I had to find out the hard way.
But I guess I should be used to failing to live up to Adam’s expectations. I wonder sometimes what the hell I have to do to get anything more than censure and restriction out of him these days. I know he cares, worries about me as he does all of us, but I can’t seem to make him realise that isn’t enough any more. He only seems to notice when I do something he doesn’t approve of, and I just wish he’d give me some of the unconditional encouragement he seems able to bestow on the others. Even Gaumont managed to give me a backhanded compliment, acknowledged the risk I took as a positive rather than something to be frowned on. But I can feel Adam doing just that, even though he hasn’t said in so many words.
Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe I *was* wrong to do it. Or maybe I just shouldn’t get myself all hung up about a few words of praise when I know that in the end what I did made a difference. *The* difference.
One thing’s for certain, though. Gaumont got it right when he said that I was too dangerous to let live. But he’ll have eternity to regret that mistake, won’t he…?
A belated, but nonetheless heartfelt thanks for your kind words! *curtseying* And yes, I'll be interested in seeing what he has to say about No Man and Signs! But funnily enough, he seems to have a lot to say even about eps that on the surface don't feature him much - which makes them a lot more interesting for me Mind you, I think even he will be hard pushed to give Crossroads more than a passing mention...
Time Squared and Whose Woods now done - about to embark on Future Revealed, which should provide some fascinating insights!
J
****
Author’s Note: Contains references to the missing scene at the end of Time Squared that I covered in my post-ep fic, ‘Closure’, which also has additional insights into Jesse’s thoughts and feelings that I didn’t want to repeat here.
Monday
Ashlocke’s still alive. I should have known he’d be too clever to let himself get caught in that explosion, but I guess sometimes wishful thinking can lull you into a false sense of security.
We know he’s up to something – we just don’t know what yet, but now we know where he’s been hiding, licking his wounds, I think we’re going to be putting in some time out there, watching him, ready for when he makes his move.
I hope he comes my way when he does. For all that Shalimar says she’s cool with Adam’s ‘save not destroy’ policy, I don’t think even she knows how she’s going to react when she comes face to face with him again.
*
Wednesday
Well, that was… different. I don’t know that I have the words to describe what happened yesterday, though I guess with all the stuff I’ve seen since I got into Mutant X the idea of time travel shouldn’t throw me too much. Just never really thought I’d be doing it!
All that talk in the sci-fi shows about not messing with history, changing the timeline – the Temporal Prime Directive, as they’d call it on Star Trek? Well, I’ve seen first hand what can happen to the now when the past gets altered and, believe me, it’s far more devastating than just suddenly finding yourself in a whole new ballgame with no memory of how things were before.
Maybe it wouldn’t have been the same for people further away from the event’s epicentre, but when Adam died back there in 1978 the effect on everything he’d created was immediate and catastrophic. And terrifying, because I knew what it had to mean and the thought of how close we came still scares me witless. So much so that I’m not sure I want to think about it any more, let alone write about it here.
Suffice to say we fixed it. Just. Or maybe that should be *I* fixed it. With Diana’s help, of course, however unwillingly given. But as she started it by sending Ashlocke back in search of a pre-emptive cure for whatever it is that’s killing him, it was only fitting she should be instrumental in finishing it. For now.
I helped, though – start it, I mean. Even though I got my wish and was right there when he made his move, I let him get away. Let him elude me long enough to reach her, let him use my indecisiveness – my lack of what it takes to make the tough decisions, as Brennan would no doubt tell me if he’d been there – to leave me floundering in his wake. And by the time I got to the hospital she’d been hiding out in, it was all much too late. Too late for me to do anything more than admit to Adam that I’d failed, that I’d not only lost Ashlocke but Brennan and Shalimar as well.
I hated that.
And Diana’s sniping didn’t help matters much, either. She wouldn’t give me anything I could use to get some points on the board with Adam before I got her back to Sanctuary, which left me in that familiar role as spectator while he and Emma got to work on her, took what she told them and made their own decisions on what to do about it, without asking for or needing my input or advice.
I bet Emma didn’t give any thought to what it might take to make everything right in the end when she jumped in there after Adam, and abandoned me to worry about them all somewhere back there in the past.
And I’ll bet she didn’t get chewed out for disobeying his orders to stay in Sanctuary. Seems like I’m the only one he considers irresponsible enough to be in need of that kind of discipline…
Em’s got some weird idea that she remembers stuff about Adam being dead. I’ve tried explaining to her that she never actually experienced it. That when I got Diana to take me back to right before it happened, so I could stop it, make things right again, she and Brennan and Shal weren’t the same people who knew he’d died, who’d done all that stuff she thinks she did with Ashlocke afterwards – because as far as they were concerned that event had yet to take place. And in the end, never did. But I guess sci-fi shows weren’t her thing because the whole temporal physics part of it went right over her head.
Adam understands, though. He and I had a chance to talk a bit when we took Diana off to a safe house so Ashlocke couldn’t get to her again. Nothing deep and meaningful – even when it’s just the two of us we never seem to do that these days. I know he means well, but I can’t help finding myself reading between the lines of what he says, looking for the patronising, the subtle and not so subtle criticism and direction, all the tiny indications that he doesn’t see me as grown up enough to make my own decisions without his help, and ready to stand by the consequences of them.
Like I did today.
Lucky for him, really, that I am. That I did.
Lucky for all of us, I guess.
He did say thank you, though. He didn’t need to, not really – I was just doing my job, and letting him die just so wasn’t an option. But I have to admit it felt good to hear him say it…
Ashlocke’s still out there hiding like some wounded animal. And I have a feeling the next time we meet up we might not be so lucky.
*
Tuesday
Speaking of wounded animals… But it’s not Ashlocke this time - he’s been keeping a low profile since he got away from me, dived back through Diana’s time portal before us and disappeared, which doesn’t fill me with a whole lot of confidence for a peaceful future. He’s probably building his strength for the big one – whatever that’s become in his warped mind.
No, this is a different kind of animal – at least, that’s what the world is calling it. We know better – well, kind of, though I don’t think we’re agreed on exactly what it is. Shalimar’s convinced it’s one of us, and a feral to boot, but only having seen the amateur video footage its last poor victims shot I’m not a hundred per cent sure I agree. She and Brennan have been up close and personal with it now, though, and he’s certain it’s at least part human. How a human ended up that way is anyone’s guess – and finding out is Adam’s latest pet project to keep us all distracted from what Ashlocke might be up to.
Shal and Brennan pulled what seemed on the face of it to be the fun assignment, getting to go out and play in the forest. It made sense for her to be there, given what they’re looking for, but him? By his own admission he doesn’t like the whole ‘back to nature’ thing, and he sure griped enough about it when Adam told him what he wanted. But he wasn’t about to give up the chance to spend time out there with her - and certainly not to me. Admitting I could handle something he couldn’t would be way too much for his ego to allow, though it gave us all a laugh how quick he was to deny her suggestion he might be scared by the prospect of a night in the boonies.
Whatever, Emma and I got to stay behind and handle the research detail. Again.
I know I shouldn’t complain. After all, it’s what I’m good at, as I proved again today, digging up those deleted files about this Nathaniel Block guy. I’d take a bet that none of the others - not even Shal - could have gotten more than the guy’s name. And at least we get to go follow up on the Chelton VA hospital lead it produced ourselves.
Seems like it’s not going too well out there in the woods, though. They did actually catch up with the… guy? – but he seems to be immune to both Brennan’s electrical calling cards and Shal’s feral tricks, managing to give them the slip and clawing her pretty good into the bargain. Typically she’d telling everyone she’s OK, that she’ll be healed before we know it, but I can’t help worrying about her. There’s something going on with her, something more than the physical injuries, some deep-rooted emotional reaction triggered by the experience that’s niggling away at her. I hope Brennan’s not planning on doing much sleeping tonight, because if anything happens to her on his watch he’s a dead man.
I doubt I’ll be resting too easy myself. We didn’t get through checking out the hospital plans until late, too late really to go up there and check out the mysterious surviving victim of our ‘Sasquatch’, so we’re going to get an early start tomorrow, hopefully get in and out before things get too busy. But I have a feeling there’s a lot more to this than the few facts I managed to pull out of the trash in the police databases. Why else would someone have tried to erase Nathaniel’s past so thoroughly? So I reckon if we can find him, talk to him about what happened, it’ll bust this can of worms wide open – and I'm looking forward to seeing what pops out.
*
Wednesday
Note to self: You really need to stop wishing for stuff to happen, because it never seems to turn out the way you expect or want…
Can’t believe it was only 24 hours ago that I was getting excited about solving this puzzle, this mystery we were uncovering. Now, I wish Adam had never read those newspaper reports, never decided it was something we needed to check out – today was chock-full of nasty surprises, and even now it’s over there’s precious little to cheer about.
This wasn’t a matter of good versus evil. There weren’t even really any bad guys out there to take on and defeat in the name of right, not unless you count that agent guy Holt and he was out of the picture before we got there. And there were certainly no winners. Because in the end I think we all lost something.
But we waded on in anyway, and two more of us died. Oh yeah, I know, they’d have died even if we hadn’t got ourselves involved, probably more violently. I just wouldn’t have had to watch it happen, had to share my friends’ guilt and anger when they couldn’t save them, knowing that what had made these men what they were was nothing more than government greed, with total disregard for their human rights – New Mutant or not.
Then I might be able to sleep better.
The day didn’t start out so bad, despite having to drag myself out of the sheets at some God-awful hour - if I had my way, anything before 9 a.m. would be abolished. The only thing that made it better was the thought of Brennan roughing it out there on the mountain in that camper van; those bench seats are a pretty poor substitute for your own bed, especially for someone as big as him. Of course, I didn’t realise then how sick Shalimar was getting. If I’d known, I’d have swapped with him in a heartbeat, but instead I went in search of that can-opener – and things pretty much went downhill from there.
Chelton totally wasn’t what I expected. Emma was right on the money when she said it wasn’t a normal psych wing – getting in was much tougher than anticipated, even though we’d checked the plans thoroughly. We ended up having to go the long way round, and because I wasn’t about to risk leaving Em in a wall again I had to put a lot of effort into it - full phase all the way, and even sending her through first each time so I could be sure she was clear before I shut it down. But it was still hard getting myself through some of them and out the other side. Sometimes even brick just doesn’t want to let me go, and that final barrier in particular had something else in there that made it like treacle for me. I asked Emma about it later, but she didn’t notice anything different. Must just be me, I guess… something else I obviously need to work on.
It was good to see that she hasn’t completely forgotten what subtlety means. Ever since she got her new psionic bazooka thing, her first reaction to every difficult situation seems to be to just blast away. But sometimes, like today, all the tricks she used to have to rely on – the little mind games, the playing on peoples’ fears and anxieties, making them see and feel what she wants instead of what was real – make more sense, especially when you’re trying to get in and out unnoticed. That panic attack she induced today was perfect, no need for anything more, but I think she forgets sometimes that offence isn’t everything.
I don’t think I’ll ever forget that first sight of poor Nathaniel, though, once we found him. It was like something out of an old B horror film, the ones with the stereotypical wacko scientists turning unsuspecting test subjects into incontrollable monsters. Looking at him, bound to the chair like that, and with that tray of horrific looking instruments next to him, I kept expecting to see all those outward signs of whatever they’d done to him – the hair, the protruding brow and jaw, the teeth and nails – to magically reverse themselves and reveal the man beneath, just like in the movies. You know how they do it, in close-up, with those hokey special effects? I could hardly take my eyes off him, sort of mesmerised, waiting for something to happen, to tell me what I was seeing was an illusion.
But this wasn’t a movie, and there were no mad scientists involved. Well, not in the classic sense, anyway, though you have to question the sanity of the men who conceived and executed Project 318. What I found in the database we downloaded and brought back with Nathaniel made my blood run cold. It’s bad enough they *bought* these guys from Genomex like that, played around with their feral DNA to the extent that they became more animal than man. But if they’d gotten around the adding elemental and molecular genes in there as well, who knows what they might have ended up with. I’m sure they didn’t. If they’d known what they were about, instead of just doing a bit of trial and error dabbling into genetic manipulation, they surely would have planned on some better outcome than that.
I didn’t think we were going to get Nathaniel out of there alive, let alone get him home, but - although I doubt the poor guy really had a clue where he was or what was going on – he seemed determined to hold out at least long enough to die free. Even so, we had to more or less carry him most of the way – not easy when you also have to worry about holding your breath and phasing a wall or two. But we made it out, and he hung on somehow until we got back to Sanctuary.
It was obvious he was really sick, though, and not just from the bullets they pumped into him. I watched Emma trying to calm him while Adam did his thing, wanting to do something to help but not knowing what. I just couldn’t get my head round what had happened to him – still can’t, really. You’d think after all we’ve seen, all we’ve been through, this would have been just one more sign that what we’re doing – working to free mutants like him – is right. But I think this struck too close to home, especially when we found out about the virus that was killing him. A virus with no existing cure, that only affects ferals.
A virus that Nate’s good buddy Mike had infected Shalimar with as well.
There was nothing we could do to save Nathaniel. He’d lost too much blood and the infection had taken way too big a hold on his already screwed up physiology. Adam tried, though, kept trying although we all knew it was hopeless, begging him to breathe as if he could somehow bring him back through sheer strength of will. And it was left to me to stop him, get him to let the guy go with at least some dignity after all that he’d been through. Emma seemed too shell-shocked by whatever emotions she’d been fielding from both the dying man and Adam himself; desperation, desolation, denial, despair – it was all there in her face as she stood by and watched me pull him away. I guess she’d also have to have been picking up on my own feelings of sorrow and distress at how things were turning out. And let’s not forget the impact of my growing comprehension that what killed him was more than likely going to kill Shal too, given what I’d seen in his blood work – that had to be coming over loud and clear too.
Adam took it badly, worse than I’d expected. I know he feels the loss of every New Mutant deeply, but I think the fact this one had suffered so much more abuse just because of what he was had made Adam more determined to give him his life back. And typically he let his failure drive him to work even harder at finding a way to save the others, so that his death might at least have some meaning.
There was so little time, though. I suppose I’d chosen not to think about Adam’s warnings that Shal might only have another day before she turned into a wild animal too – or whatever, because he really couldn’t say exactly how the virus would affect her – and then died. But Brennan’s call changed all that, and it suddenly became a race just to find her before she went too far, completely lost control.
The flight out there was hell, not helped by the satellite interference that kept us out of contact with them until we were practically on top of them. But I spent the whole journey with my stomach squirming like a pit full of snakes, trying real hard not to imagine her out there in the wilderness, lost, alone, fighting a battle against her own body, her own instincts, that there was no way she could win without our help. I heard Emma doing her best to reassure Adam, telling him what he needed to hear – that she believed the anti-virus he was working so hard on would do the job. But we were all painfully aware that this was a step into the unknown, even for him.
Funny how many of those we seem to be taking these days.
He nearly didn’t get the chance to try it out, though. We were only just in time to stop Michael – if there was still anything left of the guy inside what they’d turned him into – finishing Brennan off. And Shal seemed to have slipped way too far down the same track, even to the extent of forgetting that Adam would never kill a New Mutant out of hand, no matter how far their mutation had taken them. Otherwise she’d have understood he was only trying to help Michael, not hurt him, and she might not have interfered. But she did. And I know her well enough to know she’s going to be paying the price for a long time.
I wish I could have saved her from having to make that choice. But it all seemed to happen so quickly, and I was kind of held in thrall by sheer disbelief at what I was seeing – Emma too, I think. It took that final gunshot to jolt us out of it, and by then it was too late.
Shal was unconscious most of the way back, which was far less heart-breaking than the delirium that came in between. The virus had already made inroads into her neural pathways and there were no immediate signs she was responding to Adam’s treatment, so we all had to share her confused ramblings and screams of pain and anger at being restrained during those periods she was awake. And that didn’t make the waiting once we got back here any easier.
Adam wouldn’t let any of us see her until he was sure she was stabilising, but none of us wanted to be too far away in case the unthinkable happened. So we were reduced to loitering outside her room, pacing when the tension became too much – which was most of the time as far as Brennan was concerned - though Emma and I seemed to take more comfort from just sitting together quietly while he vented his frustration at how long it was taking, and what felt like every single event that had brought us to that moment. No words were needed from us – and we had none to give anyway, not then. Not while the full implications of what had happened, and what it might mean for the rest of us, were sinking in.
They’re still sinking, I think - enough that I need more time to really get things into perspective, sort through this jumble of emotions that I’m feeling right now. But at least we know Shal’s through the worst of it, and that’s enough for the moment.
*
Friday
Got to spend a little time with Shalimar today. Adam’s concoction, combined with more than a full day of mostly uninterrupted sleep, seems to have finally done the trick and, although she’s drained by the whole thing, we know her natural recuperative powers will have her up and around in no time. Physically, anyway. Emotionally, I think it’s going to take a lot more than her mutated genes or a bunch of chemicals to sort her out.
It seems to me she lost a little bit of her soul when she had to kill Michael to save Adam – and to ultimately save the man from what he’d become. I could see it in her eyes, feel it in the way she pulled back from my hug so quickly, hear it in her voice as she pled fatigue to get out of talking about anything more consequential than what she fancied for supper. It’s hurting her more than the aching muscles and slowly healing claw-marks – more even than the knowledge of how close she came to ending up a victim of her own feral DNA.
Emma was right again when she said that we’ll never know what our mutations leave us open to, though. I had my own brush with it with the whole Gaumont thing, and now Shal. But we were both lucky – it only really made us a danger to ourselves, and we came through the other side without lasting damage to us or anyone else. But I dread to think about the consequences of Brennan or Emma losing control of their powers, the unintentional havoc they could wreak before Adam worked out a way to fix them. Providing he even could. Like he said on the Helix, he was flying blind on this one, no idea if the antidote he’d worked up was going to work until he tried it out for real. And he needed a guinea pig for that.
Shalimar. This time.
Who next?
At least Adam’s learning from the experience, which has to be a positive, but even that’s got me wondering. I never thought about it before, seeing his focus on building a team comprising a member from each of the four main mutancy groups as just his way of ensuring the strongest possible force to stand up for the rights of those he was instrumental in creating. But now… all this talk of needing guinea pigs, test subjects… I mean, is that what we are? How he sees us? All of us? Nothing more than lab rats he can study in his efforts to prepare for a New Mutant future that none of us can foresee?
He knows far more than he’s saying, that’s for sure. Thinking back over the weeks to when our powers went into overdrive, it’s only now that I realise he was the only one of us that really wasn’t surprised that it was happening. And I think I understand why he was so devastated by Nathaniel’s death – he’d been expecting something like this mutant-specific virus to rear its ugly head, and was hoping he’d be better prepared for it. But it looks like he’s just playing it by ear, like the rest of us, so could be he doesn’t know as much as I’m maybe imagining.
Listen to me - I’m beginning to sound like some sort of conspiracy theorist. He’s probably just trying to protect us, like he always does – and, whether we want it or not, I should respect that rather than resent it.
Shouldn’t I?
Whatever… it goes without saying, really, how glad I am that we got Shalimar through this one. Well, maybe not totally without saying. I wanted to tell her – tried to, several times. But somehow there was never the right moment, what with Adam or Brennan flitting in and out the room, asking her how she felt, what she remembered. There were a few things I wanted to ask her about myself, but I could see she wasn’t ready to do much answering – she can be real evasive when she wants.
There’s one question I’ll probably never ask her, though, even when she’s back firing on all cylinders again. Did she know the difference between the two guns lying there on the ground; Adam’s, loaded with the anti-virus, and the other one – Holt’s, as I found out after – the one packing the lethal punch? And if so, was Michael’s pain just too much for her to bear, his threat to Adam enough to break through the bond she’d developed with him? Or had that bond told her that he’d already gone too far for there to be a chance of redemption? Was that what made her give in to his demand – no, his plea, that she kill him?
I guess we’ll never know – not unless she feels like telling us of her own accord. And I can’t see that happening. At least, not for a while.
Oh, she’s trying to convince us already that she’s hunky-dory, but she’s not out of the woods yet – and yes, the pun is intentional because I have a feeling a part of her will always be out there. The hard bit will be dealing with the legacy of what she so nearly became, what she shared with that lost but oh so kindred spirit. And while the virus has cleared her system, there’s no guarantee it won’t be back in one form or another in the future.
But then, as Adam said, there are no guarantees in life – not for anyone, and certainly not for us.
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The Sun Never Sets on PureMX.net
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