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The Game/Lonelywalker
He is out of place here, but no more than he would be in any other bar in any other city, drawing only a couple of wayward glances as he balances his glass on the rickety table next to the jukebox and ponders his selection. His musical tastes have never exactly been eclectic, and for the past quarter-century he has had more on his mind than either artistic appreciation or simple entertainment. He remembers lying in the dark sometime before midnight, running the philosophy of two hundred years ago through his head, interrupted by the thumping music of the students next door who were somehow always to be children whilst he, even in distant memories, would always be a man. Inevitably, he rebukes himself with the theory he knows only too well. There are no facts, Nietzsche tells him with a friendly smile, only the interpretations of facts. He thumbs in a request to the computer, and hurriedly sits down before he can be blamed for the resulting music, in all likelihood a song now derided by the twentysomething kids who are beginning to fill the place. But he sits, and regards them with a well-intentioned grin of some nostalgia. This is the game, and this is how he has chosen to play it.
There are no beginnings. Every story has always already begun. He remembers the game beginning somewhere in-between sleep and death, as a man ceasing to be a man heard a doctor's words, painfully clear through a drugged storm. He would be dead before dawn - words spoken with such authority that it was difficult not to believe them, but the man could not die that day. People who believed that they loved him brought him back from the surreality where, in all honesty, he belonged. In those few days of lucid death, the game began. It was a month before they let him breathe, and longer before they believed he was capable of being told a truth he already knew. The man was alive, and would stay that way for, in all probability, an average life expectancy. They had let him live, and took away his life, locked it away somewhere behind the world whilst encasing him in plastic, extracting his hair, removing any need for or possibility of being merely human ever again. She cried, of course, cried and left him to get on with being the monster she had rescued him to be, the monster with Adam for a father. The irony of it all could have sustained him for a month more, forgetting the implants and tasteless supplements the doctors were only too eager to try out on him, their first test subject. And when they had made him finally, irrevocably alive, they had the conversation. Doctor, oh, Doctor, will I be like this forever? Questions he had to ask for her sake, facts he had known from the moment Adam left him to die, and only one answer he needed to have. The doctor hesitated for the first time in the entire time they had known one another, perhaps finally seeing something of the man beyond his pale, hairless specimen. It took him more than a week to get his facts, and they were, he smiled as he wrote it down, more or less certain. The man still had a life waiting for him out there somewhere beyond the monster's skin. An eight hour life.
Sixteen years later and six months before tonight, he made the decision to play, finally using his habit of spending the entire night in the GenomeX compound to get some real work done, getting under his own sensors and sneaking around his own labs. Access to his own medical records up to the present day confirmed the diagnoses of a lifetime ago and gave him a way to retrace the steps necessary to undo what they had done to him. Three months of diligent work and a sharpening up of his own underused medical skills led to the reactivation of hair follicles, with the assistance of lab machinery designed for quite different purposes. In the expectation of Harrison becoming suspicious about some aspect of his work - equipment use, faked security records, odd readings on future medical checks - that night he went home for the first time in years, taking his records and research with him. He met a pile of mail, including bills the GSA would have paid, a love letter from a past girlfriend he couldn't quite remember, and several loads of what he decided would become fuel for his fireplace. Re-entering a house where every second lightbulb cracked as he tried it, where spiders lingered possessively in corners, he threw down his bag on the bare mattress which had once been a bed and felt better than he had done in a very long time.
Tonight he had been afraid. The theory of staying alive has something to do with remembering to breathe, but the air in his lungs was freezing him, the world of the man threatened to kill both monster and man, and the game seemed like the foolish idea of an already dead man. For reasons he can't remember thinking about, he just left, going home at five for the first time in living memory, not bothering to tell the gaping interns he passed on the way out what the private joke was that he couldn't stop himself smiling at. The implants had been deactivated the previous night, and all that remained was to strip off his own skin, something which had never even sounded easy. Sometime later, he found himself sitting shivering on the floor, knocked himself out of it and mechanically got ready to go out. The man who awaited him in the mirror scared him more than the monster. Like the boy separated from his own shadow, he reached out to the stranger and hit glass with tender fingertips. He sat back and regarded himself with extreme caution. The eyes were the same, yes, as those belonging to the man he remembered, but the mop of unruly brown hair which sent strands down to meet them was almost as foreign as his own naked body, clothed now in what he half-remembered wearing a lifetime ago. Eyeing himself, he snapped his watch onto his wrist, picked up his jacket and left the door unlocked.
The man tilts his chair back against the wall of the bar, closing his eyes and relishing both his drink and the atmosphere. Half-heard chat up lines and truly awful jokes mingled in cigarette smoke and the angst of Roy Orbison. He smiles at himself and wonders about the thought that has just occurred to him, belonging perhaps to another time. A half-formed idea of phoning up Adam. This place seems like his kind of night out, or at least would have been twenty or so years ago. But now he has rather less chance of finding out Adam's telephone number than of seeing the sun again. He self-consciously checks his watch as he gets up and heads towards the bar. Quarter to midnight. Four hours left. Assuming, of course, that he was abiding by those two most despised concepts: facts and averages. The three kids hanging about on the other side of the bar have no one to serve, the student population having either reached their limits or used up their money long ago. The boys, one looking the rather worse for wear, the other regaling the lone woman with tales of examination woe catches his eye and then studiously ignores him, leaving him to take up a seat and set about memorising the menu of bar meals chalked up on the wall. Minutes later, the story ends and the woman turns to look at him in some amazement.
"We're closing." She grabs his wrist and looks at his watch for him. "Ten minutes."
He swallows his instinctual rage for the touch, masks it with a half- hearted smile. "Take pity on me."
She takes him for one of the laid off businessmen from downtown, he supposes, drowning their sorrows or passing them on to anyone who will listen. "Drink quickly." She says abruptly, thumping down the glass with resolution before turning to the other two, noticing that the main student party has left through a far door. "I'll lock up. You two need your sleep." They grab packets of peanuts and clear out before she can change her mind.
The man takes up his beer and regards the remaining inhabitants of the room - three friends arguing over some minutiae, and a passed out kid in the corner. "Busy night?"
She has turned away to the till, and is surprised to hear him speak. "Busy as usual. You should see our quiet nights."
He smiles and takes a long draught. "I doubt it."
"Just passing through?" She pulls down the one side of the metal partition over the bar. He shrugs. "I guess so. I haven't been in a bar for years. Doesn't really look as if anything's changed since I was a student."
"Did you ever do bar work?" He nods with a knowing grin. "Okay, a kindred spirit. So, tell me wiseguy, what does your average honours student expect from the wide world?"
"What do you mean?"
"You're in a student hangout, drinking alone until closing time." She points out. "Pretty damning facts."
"Facts?" He shakes his head. "No. Interpretations."
She leans in. "How old are you?"
The man has to think, watching her eyes for a flicker of mistrust. "Forty five."
"Uh huh." She turns away again, a hint of laughter in her voice.
"What?" He asks in curiosity and surprise.
"What was that pause for?" She begins to count up peanut packets two feet away from the bar. "Men only do that when they're trying to prove they're twenty-one without the looks or ID."
He lifts up his hands in protestation. "I swear, I am legally allowed to purchase alcohol."
"Right. So, maybe you should be going home now?" She levers up the hinged end of the bar and goes to wake up the drunk and drop very large hints to the warring friends about clearing out. All of them are on their way out when she comes back. "Still here?"
"I'm a man in need of conversation." He replies. "And I thought you wanted the facts."
"I want to go home." She mutters, seeing the drunk amble out, crashing into one of the doors as he does so. "I'll be pulling an all- nighter essay writing contest for your information. It's your archetypal race against time."
"An old story." He nods. "What's your name?"
"Okay, now that's 'stalker' mode you just lucked into, pal." She picks up her coat and rucksack, switching off the lights behind the bar. "Come on, I'll walk you out." She extends an arm as if to hold his hand like a wayward child, looks at him in genuine kindness, and in that moment sees the man/monster behind the expected exterior. He should be dead with skin that sorry colour, neither that of her own flesh, or drawn blue with cold, but approaching a translucent white which breaks off into the unlikeliest of smiles, uncertain, but winning nonetheless. She stops there, and closes the door whilst remaining inside. "If I throw you out, where are you going to go?" She asks in a weighted tone, throat suddenly dry.
He breaks off eye contact, stares back into the yellowy alcohol. "I don't know. We tragic heroes are supposed to meet our end on a stage, on the blade of an honourable man." He turns back to watch her watching him with her curious fear. "I don't know any honourable men. Come on, I'll make you a deal. It's a very good deal, better than I would usually make." He closes his eyes, tired and wanting to live. "Stay here with me for a while. Give me my conversation, and I'll write your essay for you."
"It can wait." She says, deciding to move, but only slowly edging up on the barstool beside him. "You have to promise you're not a sociopath, though. I'm getting really bored of all those news broadcasts about missing students who get found by guys walking their dogs. In my opinion, those dogs have a lot to answer for."
The answering smile he gives is hollow, and he knows it, covering for his uncertainty by repeating: "What's your name?"
She shrugs. "Pick one. My favourite these days seems to be Cass."
He nods. "Appropriately enigmatic."
"Don't you think?" Cass looks away before meeting his eyes. "I don't suppose the handsome stranger would have a name himself?" She interprets his hesitation before he has a chance to speak. "No. That would be too much to expect."
The man straightens up and stretches out a ghostly hand for her to shake. "Mason." He says freely. "My name's Mason Eckhart."
The Mirror
He found himself standing in darkness with mirrors on his mind and, for a full ten seconds, had no idea who he was. Only once he has remembered the name – Adam – and linked the tousled bedsheets he can now see to his bare torso and feet, does he permit himself to breathe. The highly tuned computer other people would dismiss as a brain returns to its low-level operations, and the man rubs his eyes, scratches beneath tangled hair, and wonders what he could have been dreaming about.
The time is 12:20, something he would never have seen on a clock during his younger years, unless it meant broad daylight and hangover cures. But the previous few days have been agonising for both body and brain, and for the first time in a week he has slept, but not for long. He knows from the tune playing through his head and the abstract references from school textbooks poking behind his eyes that he will never get to sleep again, or really be awake. Insomnia is a truly wonderful torture, he remembers someone distantly telling him something they had read in a pulp magazine, because you’re never entirely sure if you’re dreaming. Mason. He switches on the light in surprise and squints at his own face in the mirror.
“Mason Eckhart.” Adam says slowly, as if his vocal cords are just learning how to speak. “Why on earth am I dreaming about you?”
------
He had never thought it possible to be a little bit crazy, and mandatory psychiatry classes taken long ago compound with past experience to confirm this, but still he sits and waits to die in the company of a girl of whom he knows nothing, in a bar little resembling the past years the man had sought to regain – a tragic death, indeed, but one he has long been expecting. Twenty years ago, he sits over by the jukebox, downs the remnants of a beer and asks the still scarily sober scientist what death he would choose. Adam laughs at him. “With all the possibilities at my disposal, Mason? How could I ever choose?” The rest of the night was a mixture of what he had forgotten, and what he wished he had. Adam, harbinger of death, and yet, he cracks a smile, a man who really knew how to party.
“What are you laughing at?” The girl demands with a fair amount of good humour. She is to be called Cass, short for… Cassidy? Cassandra? Some strange acronym, pop culture reference or nickname he knows nothing about. She’s the first person he’s had a conversation with in five years where he didn’t already know everything about her before they even met.
He shrugs, leaves his nearly empty glass where it is, and turns around to face her. “I used to come here with a friend. This address, anyway. It isn’t anything like the same. But… I don’t suppose it’s changed much.”
Cass eyes him thoughtfully. “It’s not exactly a dying concept. Alcohol. Music. I hear you’re a Roy Orbison fan.”
He grins unselfconsciously, running fingers through his hair before he has the time to first remind himself that it isn’t there, and then to discover that it is. “He has a certain style.”
“You’ve got ‘a certain style’ yourself.” Her toe prods his trouser leg. “The word I believe is ‘retro’.”
“Oh, everything comes around again.” Mason shrugs. “Older and better, but still essentially the same. Darwin didn’t have a clue.”
This is the wrong conversation. It might have seemed fine and correct twenty years ago, when this was the argument two idealistic young men had every night in an all-too familiar bar, along with amounts of alcohol which could fell an ox, and cruelly embarrassing bouts of karaoke. But this, while familiar, is nothing more than a ghost of previous days, with both good men dead, no more than memories, with the argument never voiced except in war. He holds up a mottled hand to his eyes, examines the flaking skin, and wonders how different it will look in three or four hours’ time. Who will find him? She’s right, he supposes, some concerned dog walker out in the early hours. The last dog he had come across was owned by Nexxogen matriarch Nicole Carter, and had seemed intent on taking a piece out of his hand. He likes the idea of being one of those corpses so ravaged by wild animals and the weather that he will be unidentifiable. The picture of Harrison finally taking a scalpel to his face in the name of medicine is not one on which he wishes to dwell.
“What is it exactly that you do, Mason?” Cass asks, seeming to be pondering a more painful question.
He shrugs and decides to do what is as close to the right thing as he can do – tell the truth, but only the parts of it that won’t get anyone else hurt. “I suppose I’m a civil servant. I work at GenomeX.”
Cass frowns. “GenomeX… Oh, down by the water. I had an interview there once for a summer job.”
“Really? What section?” He smiles with interest to cover up a sudden chilling fear that they have actually met before.
“Oh, um, filing… records, I guess.” Cass waves a hand to dismiss it. “Anyway, my alphabetising skills were somewhat lacking. So, am I missing out?”
“What?” He understands the question, but no one has ever asked it before.
“Is it a good job?” She exaggerates the simplification. “Do. You. Have. Fun?”
Mason can’t help laughing. “On my better days. I suppose I do. It’s not for everyone. We have a, uh, very high staff turnover.”
“Right.” Cass nods. “But better than tossing burgers, I should think. You don’t look like the burger tossing type.”
He ducks his head below the penetration of her eyes, which are becoming too searching, too intrigued, and Mason Eckhart is… embarrassed? He drives his fingernails into the palm of his hand and makes himself look at her. Just another kid who any other day would be cringing in his office or dead on the sidewalk. Any day but today. “I only did barwork.” He admits. “Me and Adam never went in for intellectual stuff… like burger tossing.”
“Adam?” Cass picks up on the name immediately.
“A friend of mine.” He mutters, but is hardly convincing, and her expression tells him that he has to do better. “I used to work with him. We’re not exactly in touch anymore.”
Cass sticks her tongue out in thought. “Okay, you know what I think?”
“What do you think?” He asks, in a too-good impression of a drunk. He would be seriously sick in the morning. If there was a morning.
“Here’s my pub psychology for you.” Cass taps her fingers on the bar. “Here you are, attempting to chat up a girl half your age - yes you are, and very badly, too – after hours in a bar you used to go to when you were a student with this guy… Look, I see a fair few guys like you around the place. Hell, I even went out with one of them, but they all have pretty much the same story. So, you like your job, which means you’ve actually got a job and probably aren’t heading for jail any time soon.”
“So what’s your analysis, Doctor?” Mason plants an elbow on the bar and rests his head against his fist.
Cass grins at him in a second of uncertainty. “I think your wife found out about your boyfriend, your boyfriend found out about your wife, they ran away with each other, and you’re currently doing a really bad job of drinking yourself to death.”
He looks at her in stunned amazement for a full thirty seconds before he remembers to laugh.
------
Adam eases out of his room, closing the door as quietly as he can before sneaking a look along the passageway to see that the doors of Emma and Brennan’s rooms are shut. Jesse and Shalimar are, he presumes, still out partying at their friend’s house. The night, he reminds himself, is young. Yawning, he wanders his way into the main concourse of the Sanctuary and accesses the main computer terminal, sliding onto the padded chair and hoping that some computer work will knock him out. An overview of the recent news broadcasts reveals nothing of significance, while police frequencies are busy, but not with anything appearing to result from the activities of New Mutants. Spontaneous combustion or giant lizard men tend to make a more distinct impression in the minds of cops than the drunken brawls they are currently reporting. He packs in the business and calls up the antiquated website of his alma mater, checking around the various menus to find that nothing has changed in twenty years. The essay questions for one of the courses he had taken remain eerily similar, and he quickly passes over them. Alumni. He does the obvious check for his own name, and with both relief and disappointment finds no trace. Of its other two most impressive students, only one name remains, all information on one Mason Grey Eckhart having been systematically deleted some time ago. Paul Breedlove, deceased, a good man and a genius to boot, his true achievements written over with information on his years spent teaching. Perhaps, Adam thinks, the website has got it right after all.
Thinking of, and needing, better times, he taps into the student union page, to be met with bored descriptions of the sports teams. Adam sits back and closes his eyes, wondering if sleep will finally come. It resists his invitations, and he guiltlessly moves onto more interesting, and far less legal pastures. The surveillance net for the city has been a useful resource for the Mutant X team, but tonight he uses it for nostalgic purposes, taking a look at the university he once called home, wandering the surrounding streets with the help of tens of cameras. A name makes him stop. The Drake. Public house extraordinaire, scene of many a drunken exploit. Not one to spy on innocent citizens, Adam checks his watch and remembers that, while the nightclubs will still be in full swing, this particular establishment will have already closed. With a tap of a button, he is inside. When he sees that two people remain, he almost jumps back out, but for the memory already in his head.
“You look like you’ve seen a ghost.” The voice of Emma De Lauro says, for some reason not scaring Adam at her sudden entrance as much as the sight on screen.
“Just retracing old paths.” He forces himself to find the words. “Did I wake you?”
“I wish.” Emma sighs. “I’ve been trying to get inside Walt Whitman’s head. Brennan wouldn’t stop talking about him and, well, being a psionic doesn’t help if the guy’s been dead for a hundred years.”
A smile plays on Adam’s lips as he half-listens to her. “Emma, I think I’m going out.”
“Oh.” She falters. “Trouble? You want me to come with you?”
“No. I’m just going to say hello to an old friend.” He gets up and makes for his coat. “And I suppose you’d better come and rescue me if I’m not back in a couple of hours.”
“Trust me, if this poetry doesn’t get any better I’ll be coming to rescue you in ten minutes.” Emma sits down at the computer desk as Adam hurries towards the hangar. “Who was it you were going to see?”
The Music
Laughing hurts inside this place, a monstrous shell of a man caught up in distant, false memories. He feels his blood killing him, the sweet taste of death in his throat, but, unguarded, with a smile upon his lips, he meets her eyes and can laugh no longer. Adrenaline tells him to run faster than he can interpret his own instincts, and he abruptly rises, but to go no further than the familiar jukebox on the opposite wall. He chokes back the bile and pain, casts an insanely conversational tone back over his shoulder. "Got any Bowie on this thing?"
Her eyes are on him, of course, watchful as if she suspects that he will strap the thing on his back and hightail it out of there. "Do I get an answer? Or shall I just sit here making up the entirely fictional history of your life? I may start writing up a family tree."
He makes himself turn and look at her with a more or less human smile. "Bowie?"
"Is there life on Mars? Of course there's Bowie, you moron." Cass jumps off her stool and shoves him aside to work the controls. "Are you a seventies or an eighties man?" She looks him up and down. "You certainly look more Thin White Duke than Ziggy Stardust."
"Are we going to cast aspersions on my dress sense all night?" He mutters.
"You don't like it, you make some conversation. And I don’t know about ‘all night’, either. Some of us have work to do." She hits a button with finality. "Ashes To Ashes. And no complaining."
"I'm not married." He replies. "And I don't have a boyfriend."
Cass backs into the nearest table and thoughtfully perches on its edge, sizing him up. "I never said you did. They both left you, remember?" She sees him deliberately not meeting her eyes and sighs. "Look, I'm sorry. It's obvious something's up with you, and I'm probably making it worse. Some Samaritan I am.” She pauses for a breath. “And there’s Rebel Rebel if you really want it.”
He shrugs and finds himself a chair. “I think I’ll stick with this.” He closes his eyes and leans his head back against the smooth painted metal of the jukebox, listening to the shifting mechanics as if they were cogs within his own brain, pounding out a drum line he has never really listened to before, a melody always breaking down. I’m happy, hope you’re happy too. He is aware suddenly of breathing, feeling rather than hearing it, really breathing, without the acidic filters to save his life and poison his body every time he felt like living. For thirty seconds he forgets to breathe, sickened by the vision of the corpse they will find. Not a man at all, perhaps all lies. Did he ever really wake up? He laughs in a sudden fear, forcing himself to breathe and break out in a fit of coughing as pain sears through his eyes. “Damn.” He mutters through clenched teeth, pressing his thumbs against his eyeballs. He had had a lousy friend at school, a kid who forever moaned about the injustice of the world – making him want to go kill himself, but also making sure that any possible method of dispatch was too painful or just simply too much trouble to go through with. Pain for him is an everyday experience, the hum in his skull he has learnt to ignore, but death is casting its razor nets over him, and they have no limits.
Cass prods a cold glass into his hand. “Water. You sound like you should be in bed.”
He grasps it gladly, drinks it slowly as he waits for his vision to clear. “I’ll be all right, thanks.”
“Suit yourself.” Cass yawns and looks at her watch.
“What’s the time?” He asks, a touch too quickly.
“Quarter to one.” She tells him, attention wandering to the now silent jukebox. “What’s your song?”
He finishes his water in some confusion. “What?”
She sighs. “You know those people who live under rocks – I think you’re one of them. Karaoke, Mason, the artform of a defunct world. Do you sing?”
“I try my very best not to.” He tells her.
“Ah, you’re a junkie and you know it.” She seems to be looking for something once briefly glimpsed in his face, something familiar. “You ought to be thankful I haven’t inflicted any Queen on you yet.”
“Queen?” She’s about to launch into another tirade, but he stops her by getting up to check out the track listings. “I know who Queen are.”
“Prove it.” Cass sits up crosslegged on the table in interested observation.
He freezes. “You want me to sing?”
“Look, I’m not expecting Bohemian Rhapsody, but if you’re going to keep me from my education, my bed and possible romantic assignations, you’d better be entertaining.” Cass shrugs. “Sorry, Mace, the karma gods have spoken.”
“It’s not on here.” He mutters in resignation and turns back to look at her. “Okay, fine.”
The song is, what? Why? Something he heard once, sang once washing the dishes at university, drunkenly hummed in a car taking him home from some half-remembered victory celebration, yelled from the top of one of those mountains he and Adam once took such miserable delight in climbing. He denies them all, and sings it, too quickly, too scared, a little out of tune and probably with the wrong words. But he sings, and it makes her smile.
Love of my life, don’t leave me. You’ve stolen my love, and now desert me. Love of my life, can’t you see? Bring it back, bring it back, don’t take it away from me because you don’t know what it means to me. When I grow older, I will be there, at your side, to remind you how I still love you. I still love you. Oh, hurry back, hurry back, don’t take it away from me because you don’t know what it means to me. Love of my life… love of my life…
He laughs back the tears, turns away to drive his knuckles into the hard edge of the jukebox, cursing himself for knowing and remembering. But she is too quick, has maybe found what she expected from his face, and holds back his arm.
“Who were you singing about?” She just stands there, visible in a blur out of the corner of his eye, her hands firmly around his upper arm. His instinct, trained and fuelled by anger, is to lash out and leave her lying in her own blood, a perfect picture for the night. But that, at least tonight, he cannot do. Instead he breathes, and lives, and sits down heavily on the nearest chair, covering his eyes with a hand.
When he can trust himself to speak, he does so quietly. “I wasn’t singing about anyone.”
Cass pulls up a chair, reaches out to take his fingers in hers. “You can’t sing that and not think about someone.”
“You’ve got me.” He conjures up one last laugh. “I’m madly in love with Freddie Mercury.”
“I’m serious. How many people have you ever said ‘I love you’ to?”
“Three.” He says without blinking.
“Not including your parents.”
A faint smile. “I wasn’t including them either.”
“A man after my own heart.” Cass nods. “Look…”
The bang on the outside door is sudden and loud enough to make both of them get to their feet. He reaches for a gun that isn’t there, hasn’t been there for twenty years, and then automatically assesses his options. The police he can deal with easily, simply by being no one. The intelligence agencies would be here for a better reason than cracking down on lock-ins, and even if he pulled rank, they would very probably wake up most of GenomeX to confirm it. Anyone else, he decides, will have a very close encounter with a beer bottle.
More banging. “Anna? I know you’re in there. Open up. It’s Adam.”
He notices the abrupt lack of a response from her, takes her hand and makes her look at him. “Adam?”
Cass looks at him, caught in a moment of indecision. “Not your Adam, you fool. My Adam.”
“You have an Adam?” He asks stupidly.
She turns to check on the current status of the door. “I’ll have to let him in. You should probably go to the bathroom for ten minutes.”
“Cass, I’ll deal with this jerk.” It feels good to be a man again, he reminds himself. But, unfortunately a man whose insides are ripping themselves apart.
“Thank you for the offer.” She pushes him backwards and towards the flickering sign for the toilets. “Now stay put.”
Mason nods and leaves the room, making sure he closes the door before he collapses to the tiled floor. A dying man with blood in his mouth in a spinning room.
The Prodigal
Adam rubs his knuckles, sore from knocking the rough wooden door of the bar, and takes a furtive look up at the night sky, grey-black clouds reflecting back orange streetlight into the puddles at his feet. It has been raining, as his wet hair and dripping coat attest, and while the air has had ten minutes to dry out, it too is wary of future turns in the weather. The door creaks as it is opened from inside, and he turns to see her standing there, the backlit silhouette of a half-known woman.
“Hello Anna.” He says quietly, a tad patronising, as if he were talking to a small, frightened child.
She shakes her head in disgust and marches back into the main room. “Close the door behind you.”
He waits for a second, sizing up her reaction and wondering if this may be a trap. In their previous encounters, the least she has given him is a tongue-lashing. The worst had him flat on his back for a couple of days, counting the cracks in Sanctuary’s ceiling. But he has not come here to wait outside, so he steps in, closes the door softly, and takes off his coat, hanging it over the back of a chair to dry. The barroom is empty, but for the usual chairs and tables, the old and friendly jukebox, and an almost empty glass on the bar. He takes up the seat there and fingers the glass whilst she ponders over the next track on the jukebox. As she turns back to confront him, Karma Chameleon is playing, and he cannot help a smile. “How’ve you been, Anna?”
“I haven’t been Anna.” Cass won’t sit down when he’s in the room, so she stands six feet away, hands behind her back. “You’ve been spying on me.”
He shrugs off the truth. “You and your boyfriend. Where is he?”
“He left.” Cass tells him. “So, out with the preaching Adamski. I’ve never known you to enter a room without trying to convert everyone in it.”
“Not everyone.” Adam says quickly. “Because you’re not everyone, Anna. I know it, Nicky knew it, and if the GSA don’t know it now, they soon will. You can’t just stay here and not contact me.”
“So you’ll protect me?” Cass moves now, going behind the bar and snatching up the glass. “Sorry to overuse a phrase, Adam, but ‘yeah, right!’. Nothing has changed since the last time you busted into my life and I whupped your ass.”
“You’ve got a lot more careless.” He points out. “You’re supposed to be dead. Dead and buried fifty miles away. I don’t know how you’re alive, but at least if you faked your death you were keeping away from Eckhart. My goal isn’t to collect an entire set of New Mutants, it’s to protect you all.”
She doesn’t laugh in contempt as he expects her to, just turns away to pick up a Coke bottle. “Who’s Eckhart?”
Adam’s tone changes as he selects the story at odds with the situation. This is now, he reminds himself. “The security chief of GenomeX, where I used to work. It’s a cover for the GSA. If you’d stuck around a little longer, I could have told you all this, at least.”
“And, miraculously I’m still alive and well and failing to graduate from university.” Cass leans on the bar with her Coke and hisses. “Get out of my life, Adam. I’m not your problem. Not any more.”
He grabs her arm before she can move away. “Listen to me! Eckhart will put down some pretty nice arguments about why you should work for him. He can be charming if he feels like it, he can give you breaks I can’t come close to. You’ll graduate, Anna, and you’ll get a job, and you might even survive for six months. But sooner or later you’ll either fail and get put in a stasis pod, or try to escape and get killed. It’s happened before, and it’ll happen again.”
She gives him a taunting smile, latches onto his forearm and pulls him halfway onto the bar, knocking over the Coke bottle which spills over his shirt. “Like you said, Adamski, I’m not just anyone.”
Cass waits until he decides to struggle free before releasing her grip, sending him crashing back down onto the barstool. At that moment, Adam’s fuse runs out, and he gets to his feet. “I’m human, Anna. An unarmed human who doesn’t want to hurt you. You’re no feral who can run away quickly or fight quicker, no elemental who can fry me where I stand. You’re just a misinformation runner. And that means nothing in this real world you’re so eager to get back to.”
“Keep talking, Adam.” She smiles. “Honestly, you guys are writing my psychology paper for me tonight.”
He takes a step backwards in bitter disappointment, finds his sodden shirt sticking to his chest, and sighs. “Fine. I’ll leave. Just give me a minute.”
Adam runs a hand through his hair, finds it still wet, and inwardly groans as he pushes open the door to the toilets. Another night of insomnia destined to turn out as badly as a nightmare: frustrating, tiring, and ultimately boring. He is so involved in his own thoughts, desperately trying to think of a tactic to get Anna to come back with him to Sanctuary, at least for a full briefing on the current New Mutant situation, that it takes him a full five seconds to realise what he is seeing. A pale man sitting shivering on the floor, head touched to his knees. The student doctor in him kicks in, and he calls out carefully. “Are you okay?”
“Leave me alone.” A muttered response underneath harsh breathing.
Adam takes a breath, puzzles over the likelihood of Anna leaving a drunk in the toilets, and moves towards the sink to wash off his shirt. “I’m a doctor. You don’t exactly look well. Let me help you.”
Something like a laugh. “Oh, the irony. The ignominy.” The pale man coughs and untangles his limbs, straightening up. In the mirror above the sink, Adam sees a spectre dead for twenty years, and cannot bring himself either to look around or look away.
“Mason?”
“Ah yes, indeed.” The spectre wipes away a film of blood from his lips. “How nice to see you, Adam. I would have called, but sadly you’re ex-directory.”
The dark humour is a step away from the ghosts of the soul Adam truly fears, and he makes himself turn around, looking his friend in the eyes. “Christ, Mason, what happened?” He takes an almost unbidden step forward and reaches out to touch the younger man’s face before the inevitable recoil. Skin, not plastic.
Mason’s eyes flash in anger before he can find the words. “Don’t do that!”
“What the hell happened?” Adam stands his ground and demands.
The spectre groans, breaks eye contact. “Take a wild guess. I’ve decided to let you kill me, Adam. Let you kill me, and actually die.”
The reaction is instinctual, without a thought. “I’ve got to get you back to Sanctuary. When did you do this?”
The laugh, however, is well prepared. “I refer you to my earlier comment. Years spent in pursuit of you, Adam, and all I had to do was turn back the clock. You’ll trash my facility, beat me up, disable my agents, thwart everything I do in the name of living, but you won’t let me die. I wonder why that is. Guilt, perhaps? A refusal to confront reality? Isn’t that why you’re back in a twenty-year-old memory looking for your best friend?”
The Adam of twenty years ago lashes out in simple irritation, splitting his knuckles on Mason’s teeth and sending his friend cracking his head into the wall. The sudden pain and flowing blood jerks him to his senses. “Damn! Mason, I’m sorry.” He reaches out a hand to Mason’s shoulder which is quickly thrown away.
“Get your filthy hands off me.” Mason says with less volume and more feeling.
Adam stands back in visible concern. “Mason, look at me. I’m your friend, I always have been. We may differ in our philosophies, and we may hate each other just as much as we ever liked each other, but I’m not going to let you die here. There are better ways.”
“Pick one.” Mason stares right at him, a sight he has not seen for too long, except in his dreams, clear blue eyes in a once-handsome face, nicked now with scars, a shade paler than he should be, but nonetheless the same man Adam had once loved as a friend. Loved and killed.
“Mason, I-.” No, he won’t let himself think that thought. The boy isn’t dead.
“Adam.” An abstract voice he at first doesn’t recognise.
“I think you’ve got a call waiting.” Mason grins insanely, turns away as if to give Adam a little privacy, and resumes his coughing.
Adam raises his comlink ring to his mouth. “I’m here.”
“Adam, we have a bit of a situation here.” Emma says in measured tones, betraying only a little panic. “Jesse called in twenty minutes ago to report that he and Shalimar were being followed by GSA goons. Now we can’t get in touch with either of them.”
“Damn.” Adam casts a look at Mason, who still has his back turned. “Where were they?”
“I have the location of their rings, Adam.” Brennan’s voice replies. “Outside a bookshop on Fifth. But if the GSA have them…”
“It could be a trap.” Adam fills in. “Okay, I’m not far from there. I’ll check it out. Emma, keep trying to contact them. Brennan, see if you can track down their car. I’ll get back to you in ten.” He lowers his hand. “Do you know anything about this?”
Mason shakes his head. “I’m as stunned as you are. Looks like I finally found some agents capable to tying their own shoelaces. Further reference to that irony thing I was talking about.”
Adam stands for a moment in indecision. “I have to go. I’m sorry.” He hurries out into the barroom, where Cass is wiping down tables and singing along to Rebel Rebel.
“You took your time.” She straightens up. “Thought of any good arguments?”
“Anna, I have to go. My people are in trouble.” He shakes the rain out of his coat and puts it back on. “You’ll have to look after him.”
“Look after who?”
“Mason.” Adam says quickly. “I assume you do know he’s coughing his guts up in the toilets? He’ll die if you don’t get him back to GenomeX, and quickly. He won’t go with me, but I suppose…”
“Look, I barely know the guy, okay?” Cass states bluntly. “He can do whatever the hell he wants. Now are you leaving or aren’t you?”
Adam hesitates. “Anna, please. It isn’t for me.”
“No, I think it is for you.” She stares him down.
He checks his watch quickly. “I’ll be back as soon as I can. Call me.” And with that, he leaves at a run.
The Past
He searches for silence within his head, licking blood from his pale lips and wondering when the idiot will stop screaming. The fear of the unknown is half the pain, he remembers being told whilst half conscious, lolling in a chair designed for particular educatory purposes, hardly able to move for the straps biting into his wrists, a captive audience if there ever was one. He closes his eyes, breathes and follows the air down into his body, feeling the blood in his ears pumping out the same old tune. Acidic implants breaking down, biting into his stomach, heart, and lungs; oxygen carrying parasitic germs ready to kill their defenceless host at a moment's notice. He finds the pain, observes it, stares it in the face and regards it with a resigned curiosity. What an opportunity Adam is missing, he finds himself thinking, opening his eyes to find himself sprawled on the floor, cold and nauseous. Fortunately, he doesn't have the time to berate himself for any lack of dignity.
The door slams against the wall as Cass stands in the entrance with fury in her eyes and a gun in her hand. He slowly gets to his feet, hugging the wall, unbidden mind working the usual, trained calculations. There are no exits, and no way that he can fight her if she has any idea how to work that thing. Instead, he judges her rage, and wonders if it would not be such a bad thing to die quickly. She doesn't let him do any more thinking, raising the gun to the level of his chest.
"What's your name?"
"I told you." He says wearily.
"Tell me again."
"Mason Eckhart." He raises a hand over his eyes, tired and blinded by the flickering fluorescent lights in the ceiling.
"And what do you do, Mason Eckhart?" She says with more accusation than interest.
"I work at GenomeX." The glare in her eyes makes him continue. "Which is a front for the Genetic Security Agency. But you knew that, I assume."
"I do now." Cass spits out. "Your boyfriend filled me in. Thanks a lot for leading him here. Do you know how hard I worked to disappear the last time? Do you know how hard it is not to have a life? To have to lose everyone you know, everyone you love, just so you can stay alive and free?"
He can't look at her, can hardly find the words. "I didn't lead him here."
"Oh, sure, two old friends turn up at a bar where there just happens to be a New Mutant both of you are looking for?" Cass seems to lose the will to shoot him, lowering the gun to her side with a scarcely perceptible sigh. "Get out."
He has neither the will nor energy to argue his case, deciding to trust his legs to get him out of this place where the past is threatening to kill him. Cass steps aside to let him past as he coughs through gritted teeth. "Adam told me to take you back to GenomeX, he said you were sick. Not that I'm concerned about Adam's friends, but dead bodies on the sidewalk would give this place a bad name."
"Was that a question?" He asks, half turning.
Cass groans. "What are you doing to me?" She stuffs the gun into the waistband of her jeans and pulls at his arm to make him turn around. "You look like someone with... um, what was that thing Keats had?"
"Tuberculosis." He fills in, flinching as she touches his chin, looking at his eyes. "Don't worry, I'm no poet."
"Really. I would never have guessed." She releases him, takes a step back. "I need answers. What are you doing here?"
He pulls out a chair. "May I?" He sits down, buries his eyes in his hands for a moment before responding. "What would you do if you had eight hours left to live?"
Cass shrugs. "Invest in a really good watch."
He looks at her, smiling. "No, seriously."
"Get stoned, get laid, and maybe call my Mom." She checks them off on her fingers before his eyes catch hers. "Oh no. Don't tell me I was right. You've looked like a guy about to throw himself off a bridge since the moment you started playing Roy Orbison. What's up, Mason? And I mean really, what's wrong? No crap about boyfriends this time, I promise." Cass says earnestly, but suddenly reconsiders. "And on the getting laid score, I can probably fit you into my hectic schedule sometime next month if you stick around."
That makes him laugh, a sound with which he hasn't been overly familiar lately. "A tempting offer, no doubt, but no, I won't be around." He checks his watch with resignation and closes his eyes in response to what he sees. "I wish I'd met you a long time ago, Cass. I would've liked to have known you better."
"Excuse me, you big chief stasis pods, me New Mutant." Cass objects. "Is there something wrong with this picture? Besides, I was in high school and such concepts are far too worrying to contemplate."
"I don't hate New Mutants, Cass." He says quietly. "I hate New Mutants... I hate anyone who uses their talents or powers to terrorise others. And I think you've met some of those people."
Cass seems uneasy, brushing a strand of hair from her face. "Terrorism is a subjective term, you know. Much as I hate to defend Adam, he isn't evil. Many people you would regard as great men were once put in the same basket."
He nods. "You're right, of course. But there is a proper democratic process for political change as regards New Mutants, and Adam persists in committing criminal acts on a daily basis. He harbours New Mutants who are wanted by the authorities. Did you know that one of his Mutant X team is an unashamed thief wanted for a chain of bank robberies, muggings and other scams?" He breaks off for breath, smiling at himself. "But that's just my rant for the day."
"You don't need to convince me that Adam isn't a knight in shining armour." Cass mutters.
He watches her with interest. "What are your powers?"
"Powers? Ha. You make me sound like a superhero." Cass replies, sitting back on a table, picking up a plastic ashtray and throwing it at him. He catches it in some surprise, sets it back in place. "See that? On a mathematical level, what you did is so amazing that it hardly computes. What I can do is just about as impressive as a batter hitting a home run, or an actor remembering the whole of Macbeth. I run misinformation, lie the truth, insert frames of unreality into the film that is the world. A borderline psionic who might be using her powers or just getting a migraine. Go figure. Now, what's your tragic story, if we're playing truth or dare?"
"I don't have an immune system." He repeats the words he had said dully to himself twenty years ago, numb and disbelieving. "In a little over two hours I'll be dead."
"You mean you've got AIDS?" She stutters out the words.
"No. I mean I don't have an immune system. Do you know how long it takes HIV to kill someone? Maybe years, maybe even never with the drugs scientists are working on." He shakes his head. "Twenty years ago, as the result of one of Adam's experiments, my immune system was burnt out. Ever since I've been the walking dead. I had plastic skin. Implants inside me to filter the air, my blood, food and drink. Six hours ago I turned it all off, started dying again. It may not exactly be life, but it's better than what I had."
The room is silent, and he watches her in curiosity, waiting for the disbelief, the half-hearted joke, maybe even the tears. Cass stands up, walks the few steps to take his hand from his eyes. "What do you want me to do?"
He licks dry lips. "Let me stay here. I've come this far not to die in an alley in the rain. But you go home. I'll break a window to make it look like you knew nothing about it. Go. You've got an essay to do, remember?"
"No." She says. "I don't. And you're not dying tonight. Adam hates you for what you do to his people, he ruined my life to keep me away from you, but he still wants me to save your life, so I guess there must be some reason to it."
He doesn't meet her eyes. "You're going to drag me back to GenomeX just because Adam told you to?"
"No." She tugs on his jacket to get him to stand. "I'm dragging you back to GenomeX because I'm not going to allow you to miss our date next week just because you're dead."
"Our date?" He is too mystified to object as she steers him towards the door, unhooking her leather jacket from behind the bar.
"Oh, didn't I do that bit?" Cass clears her throat. "Mason, do you want to come to the cinema with me next Friday? You do? Great."
"Cass..." He begins uncertainly.
"You can pick me up at six and we'll grab some dinner on the way. Are you a romantic comedy or a sci-fi fan, because I'm even. Mind you, the guy in the sci-fi looks hot beyond words..."
"Cass..."
"That'll be the romantic comedy then, but don't say I didn't warn you."
"Cass, I can't..." He says desperately. "I can't make love to you."
She stops at opening the door, turns back and takes hold of his hand. "I absolutely never sleep with anyone on a first date, and that's all I'm asking. One date. At the cinema. With popcorn and Coke and, depending how boring the film is, possible kissing in the back seat." Cass pulls him outside. "Now, come on or we'll miss the party."
The door closes with a resounding thud.
The Hunt
The police lights flash red and blue into the windows of closed shops as Adam skids around a corner and stops dead, grabbing the shadows and watching from a distance. Despite all the brainpower and technology he has at his disposal, including a network of highly skilled and very powerful New Mutants, he is tonight nothing more than a man, and perhaps not even that. He rubs someone else's blood between his fingers, distracted, squinting into the darkness in the hope of finding a familiar face. Either that, or definite confirmation that two of his "children", Jesse Kilmartin and Shalimar Fox, are no longer here. He finds no answers but those arising new questions as a third police car screeches into position, offloading four men in riot gear. One of them absently turns in his direction, and he dodges into the nearest alley, a mere flicker of a black coat covering his escape.
"Emma?" He whispers urgently.
"I'm here." She responds instantly. "Did you find them?"
"I found the police." Adam risks a peek around to observe the activity in the street. "If they are here, they're in trouble."
"The signal from the rings has moved, but not far." Emma reports. "They should still be in your block. I'm getting a lot of interference from the storm, so it's difficult to get a more exact reading. Brennan located the car, but it's still outside the club."
"Right." Adam forces his brain to compute, but finds no easy answers. "Any ideas behind this police buildup?"
"I've been listening." Brennan jumps in. "Didn't think it was anything to do with us, though. There's been an all-points bulletin on three escaped prisoners for the last two hours."
"Escaped prisoners?" Adam frowns. "Escaped from where?"
"The airport. They were being held as suspects in an international terrorism case until the CIA got there, but it seems they didn't wait around."
"We didn't wait around either." The voice of Shalimar Fox alerts Adam to her arrival from the rooftops as she elegantly drops into position beside him. Jesse is rather less careful, splashing into one of the many muddy puddles around his feet. "I think we picked the wrong night to go clubbing."
"Yeah, but wasn't it great while it lasted?" Jesse grins until he finds Adam's stern face in the orange light.
"Okay, Emma, I've got them." Adam says to his comlink and then drops his hand. "What happened?"
-----
Mason stands and lets the rain run down his face, smelling the rawness of it, remembering to breathe. It hurts, snakes tightening their grip around his ribs, but he manages to open his eyes, stay awake, and follow Cass through the carpark at the back of the bar.
"I don't suppose you have a car?" She asks, stuffing her hands into her pockets against the cold.
He coughs, hugs his jacket closer to him. "I don't have a license. I used to bike everywhere, and now they wouldn't let me near any machinery."
"Is that your excuse to get out of doing the ironing?" She stops and looks up and down the street. "Too late for buses. Or the underground. How're you holding up?"
"I'm okay." He lies, and she knows that he does.
"I guess it'll only be a half hour walk." Cass inspects the sky for any evidence of a lessening in the rain, and finds a crackle of lightning. "Next time, Mace, can you pick a better day for attempted suicide?"
He doesn't reply, follows her mutely along the sidewalk, his hair dripping rainwater in his eyes. The silence cannot hold, the pain and the cold forcing him into the distraction of conversation. "How does your, um, gift work?"
"How can you ride a bike?" She responds too quickly, tossing the remark over her shoulder in well-rehearsed style.
"Can you show me?" He replies softly, voice hardly heard above the rising wind. After a lengthy pause, he decides that the conversation is at an end, wipes oily water from his eyes and stops in an instant of curiously distant and horribly real crackling pain in his arm. He touches his forearm hesitantly, but the moment has gone.
"There's nothing wrong with your arm, Mason." Cass, too, has come to a halt, standing a few feet in front of him, outlined by the orange streetlighting filtered through the rain.
"What did you do?" He twists his arm around and finds no evidence of the broken bone he anticipates.
Cass shrugs. "I made you remember breaking your arm."
"But I've never broken my arm." He replies in confusion.
"No, but you've fallen off your bike. You've been knocked unconscious. You've experienced extreme pain. Put them all together and for an instant you'll remember with total clarity the moment when a car jumped a red light and knocked you to the ground." Cass explains in an attacking tone before she relents, paces back to brush dark threads of hair from his eyes. "Now, you have to show me how to ride a bike."
"You can't ride a bike?" He says in disbelief as they continue walking.
"What, and you can't read people's minds? Gee, Mace, how did you ever survive to be twenty?"
-----
Adam looks out into the street, checks it up and down for a police presence, and ducks back into the 24-7 internet café where he, Jesse and Shalimar are holding council. "Any luck?"
"Two men, one woman." Jesse reports in a whisper. Although the time is nearing 2.30 a.m., the café still contains several other users, all of whom have expressed an interest of one kind or the other in the Mutant X team. Adam surmises that they are all regulars to whom the appearance of three striking and overly cautious people is the news of the week. "Came in on a flight from Switzerland yesterday, but they have German passports. Stephan and Alex Doswald, a married couple, and this guy called Bryan Erskine."
Shalimar leans over his shoulder to see the passport details. "He doesn't sound German."
Jesse shrugs. "Who knows what his story is? I'll see what I can do. But why are we looking this up, Adam? It isn't exactly our concern. Do you think these people could be New Mutants?"
"What?" Adam pulls his gaze away from the window. "No, it's unlikely. The vast majority of New Mutants originated from the United States and Canada."
"Not wanting to be uncaring, Adam, but Jesse's right." Shalimar says. "This is police business, not ours."
Adam frowns. "You're certain those men were cops, not GSA?"
"Well, the way they kept yelling 'Stop! Police!' was a big hint." Jesse mutters.
"Fine, go home." Adam replies. "Log off and find the car and go straight back to Sanctuary."
"What about you?" Shalimar calls after him as he disappears out into the street.
Adam jogs down two blocks in the rough direction of the bar before contacting the members of the team still at Sanctuary. "Emma? Can you look for a telephone number for me?"
"Sure."
Adam hesitates before saying what he has to say. "I want you to find Mason Eckhart's mobile."
-----
"I don't suppose you know how to hotwire a car?" Cass asks him, playfully running a finger along the side of the nearest example, tracing a thin line in the raindrops. "Sadly I was too good a student in high school and missed all those extracurricular activities."
Mason automatically sticks his fingers into his jacket pocket, pricking his thumb on the end of an old but familiar screwdriver. He picks it out, laughing at himself. "A relic, indeed."
"Okay, I obviously picked the right guy." She grins. "How about it?"
He surveys the nearest cars parked up on the side of the street, barely distinguishable in the darkness, and willpower deserts him. "I can't do this."
"Mason, it's one car against your life." Cass edges closer to him, sensing something deeper to his argument. "I'll drive it back in an hour."
He closes his eyes for a second longer than a blink. "I can't see straight. I can't even think outside what I'm saying to you now. I'm going to get us both killed."
"Hey, my driving isn't that bad." Cass beats out a forced levity. "And I doubt we'll be needing to do any parallel parking." He doesn't reply, bowing his head almost to his chest, fighting some internal battle. "Mason... tell me what to do."
Against the silence, a harsh click is heard, distant but clear enough for a man who recognises the sounds of twenty five different makes of gun being cocked. Mason catches Cass' arm before he has even opened his eyes. "Get under the car."
"What was that?" She demands in confusion and fear.
He presses a finger to his lips as they crouch down a roll underneath the nearest car, lying face down in the muddy rain next to the kerbstone. He can see out as far as the glow from the streetlight a few metres away will show, and he sees nothing yet. Checking her face, he finds sheer terror of a kind surely unjustified by the little evidence she has. Putting an arm around her shoulders, he hugs her close for a moment before the scattering of stones fifty feet off makes him freeze. Three pairs of feet, probably two men and a woman, moving quickly, as quietly as untrained people might do if they were being followed. Mason reaches for a gun that isn't there, and is met by the sound of a phone he had forgotten blaring out a ringtone into the night. Cass grabs his free hand and holds her breath, hearing, as he does, the footsteps of the approaching strangers coming closer.
Mason picks out his phone and calmly answers it. "Gee, Adam, how nice of you to call."
"Mason, where are you? I'll come and pick you up." Adam's voice, distorted but recognisable, is faintly heard.
"Well, I'm kind of busy with my girlfriend right now." He watches the feet stop next to the car, one of the men, white with a shock of blond hair, kneels down to grin inanely at the two of them.
"Mason, you can't trust Cass." Adam says urgently. "I don't know what's happened, but she can be dangerous..."
"Speak to you later." Mason cuts him off, ending the call before the man seizes the phone and drags him by the wrist out onto the sidewalk.
"Looks like we got ourselves some hostages." Blondie says, turning his attentions to Cass. "Are you gonna come out, dearie? We are on a schedule, you know."
Cass crawls out and pushes him away from her when he tries to take hold of her, preferring to stand next to Mason, who has clenched his fists to draw blood.
"Well, if looks could kill." Blondie says to his two companions. "Come on, you two just joined the mystery tour."
The Killer
Adam runs the rest of the way to the bar, heart thumping in his chest as the continuing rain plasters his hair to his head and runs icy rivers inside his clothes, encountering no one on the way. The lights are out, the door locked, and there remains no one of whom to demand information. He lifts his comlink ring to his lips. "Emma? Did that sound a little odd to you?"
"What, apart from you deciding to give our arch enemy a call in the middle of the night?" Emma retorts. "I think that if Mason Eckhart isn't number one on my list of people least likely to say 'gee', he's pretty close."
"Ha." Adam looks around in search of inspiration. "Where is everyone?"
"Oh, that'll be the police curfew." Emma explains. "Because of the escaped criminals, the police don't want anyone on the streets to get caught in the crossfire."
"They must really want these people." Adam deliberates. "Any idea why?"
"It's just down as acts of terrorism, nothing specific, but I ran a search on Bryan Erskine, and his name came up in a lot of indirect connections with genetic experimentation, freak occurrences, stuff like that."
"A New Mutant?"
"It's possible." Emma replies. "I'll let you know if I find anything concrete. But what about Eckhart? Who's this girl he's with?"
Adam hesitates. "Is Brennan still there?"
"He went back to bed." Emma giggles. "I think he still has a hangover from last night."
"Then keep this between us." Adam finds shelter under the overhanging roof of an old stone building. "Mason tried to kill himself tonight. In a couple of hours he could be dead. I told Cass to look after him till I got back, but they're gone, and I think she might be pulling something."
"Adam, stop. Rewind. Who's Cass?"
"Anna Cassius, a psionic I tried to get into the underground a few years ago." Adam sighs. "It all fell through when her fiancé died... Under normal circumstances I'd say she was working for the GSA to get back at me, but now I don't know."
"Didn't you keep tabs on her?" Emma asks, looking up Adam's files as she speaks.
"I thought she was dead." Adam replies. "Find out what you can. I'm going to go from here to the police lines, see if there's anything out of the ordinary."
"Adam, wait!" Emma yells just as Adam is about to break off contact. "I just heard on the police frequency - our terrorists just called in that they have two hostages, and will kill one of them in half an hour if they see even one cop on the streets."
-----
The blond head of Bryan Erskine nods happily as he switches off his transmitter and turns to face his small audience of four. Cass writhes in the grasp of a tall, dark woman who is stony both in expression and in build, whilst Mason stands and contemplates the dusty floor of the warehouse in the company of her husband, a ponytailed young man with enough gadgets strapped to his belt to set off more than a few airport alarms.
"Well, I suppose I have to thank you both for your assistance." Erskine smiles a toothy, charming smile in Cass' general direction. "Next time, kids, you should probably make out in some place with a little more privacy."
"Who the hell are you?" Cass demands.
Erskine grins, walks over and forcibly clamps her jaw shut. "Be quiet, little girl. You've only got half an hour, and then you won't have anyone to talk to, one way or another. Stef, Alex, we have that project to work on..."
Stephan tosses Mason to the ground with a twist of his arm, and marches off towards the door. Cass cries out and attempts to break free, but Alex hits her in the gut before bloodying her face and joining the men at the door. "Have fun, you hear?" Erskine sticks out his tongue before closing the door on them.
Cass immediately gets to her feet, coughing air back into her lungs and checking the sturdiness of the walls. Kicking at the plaster only rouses a cloud of dust, and makes her hop back to the centre of the room where Mason is sitting cross-legged, eyes closed and hands against his ears. "Mason." She kneels down next to him and touches one of his hands lightly. "We have to get out of here."
He shakes his head, looking at her. "We can't. These people are professionals."
"Yeah, right." Cass replies. "That guy's a loony."
"I know him." Mason says sadly. "And he knows me, at least the version of me that anyone in the world has known the past few years. His name's Bryan Erskine, and you're right, he's insane. Unfortunately he's also very intelligent and extremely focused."
"I worry about the company you keep." Cass deliberates. "Focused on what?"
"The systematic eradication of all New Mutants from the planet." Mason answers in a monotone. "A second holocaust."
"Jesus." Cass catches her breath. "And you know this guy?"
"We tried to deal with him a couple of years ago." Mason relates. "He was holding five New Mutants and intended to shoot them. The GSA offered a ransom for their release into our custody but, after leading us on for weeks, he engineered it so that he took the money and shot them anyway." He shivers and abruptly stands up. "He's a Nazi, a madman, and no person ever deserved to be shot more than him."
"Well, at least the police know about him now." Cass says.
Mason coughs painfully. "They know about him, but they won't do anything until they know for certain he has hostages. Which means until they shoot me in half an hour." He breaks off into a coughing fit, covering his mouth with a pale hand.
"Shoot you?" Cass scrambles to her feet. "Why would they shoot you instead of me?"
Mason turns around and shows her his bloody hand, smiling through red-flecked teeth. "Because I'm already dead." He crumples to the floor before she can catch him.
-----
The police line, bearing bulletproof shields and fully dressed in riot gear, progresses slowly, gunmen checking every door, every alleyway, but tramples everything in its path. Adam dodges down a sidestreet and hurries away. "Emma, I found the cops. It's going to be impossible for anyone to get out of this area."
"I know." Emma reports. "I pinpointed the signals. They've got an area of maybe twenty blocks surrounded. No one can get in or out without ID and even then they seem to be arresting everyone. The nearest police station has a whole backlog of prisoners."
"Not Mason or Cass?"
"No, I checked that." Emma says. "Nothing in the hospitals either. They're not showing up anywhere. I think Erskine must have them."
"Damn." Adam takes a look around the corner to check for a police presence and keeps moving. "Are Jesse and Shalimar back yet?"
"They just got in a minute ago."
"Good. Wake Brennan up. I want him and Shalimar to take the Double Helix out. Even if I don't find Mason, I'm going to need an escape route. Tell Jesse to get back out here in the car and do some recon around the police lines. I think if anyone can bypass the patrols, he can."
-----
He wakes up with a taste in his mouth like he has just eaten a plateful of spiders, opens his eyes and finds Cass watching him in amazement. "I thought you were dead!"
"You can usually tell from the way that I was breathing." He coughs and watches the world spin for a second before leaning back against Cass' shoulder, where she had been holding him.
"You weren't breathing." She tells him in quiet horror. "I do have my first aid certificate."
"Well, that's good to know." He says weakly.
"How are you doing?" She tightens her grip around him.
"Dying slowly." A sudden thought hits him. "How long was I out?"
"A couple of minutes." She checks her watch. "It's just past three."
"Well, damn the world for turning slowly." He mutters.
"Mason, we're not just going to sit back and let them kill us." Cass says urgently. "I know you must feel rotten, but..."
"I'm dying, Cass." He interrupts with sudden clarity. "And it's a better feeling than being Adam's vampire. Even if we got back to GenomeX, it wouldn't make any difference now. You'll get out okay." He reassures her tearful face. "If Adam isn't tearing apart the city to get to you, the police will."
"The police won't give a damn whether I stay alive, you know it." She replies with equal force. "And Adam... Adam thought I was dead for three years, and he liked that idea better than me being alive."
"What happened?" He asks with faint interest.
Cass laughs without humour. "I was nineteen years old, I was doing pretty well at university - not exactly top of my class, but getting there - and I was getting married in six months to the man of my dreams. His name was Nicholas. Adam always called him Nicky, and he hated that. Nicholas' dad had been an old friend of Adam's, from some place or other."
"What was his name?"
"Jake Thompson."
Mason shakes his head. "Don't know him. Before my time."
"It doesn't matter. For all I care it was the M.I.T. mud wrestling society." Cass grins and tangles her fingers up in his hair. "Anyway, there was a murder on campus under very strange circumstances. A girl in Nicholas' physics class just dropped dead while he was talking to her."
"Cass, that isn't a murder."
"Right. The paramedics assumed she had some history of heart problems or something, but they checked up her medical records and found nothing. The autopsy basically said that she shouldn't be dead. I mean, apart from the fact she wasn't breathing and her heart wasn't pumping blood, she was as healthy as I am. The medical examiner recorded some ambiguous statement basically covering up the fact that they didn't have a clue, but he added one line. He said that it appeared that the girl had just convinced herself she was dead, and died. And then Adam showed up."
"The man certainly gets around."
"He was visiting Jake to get a second opinion on some weird science stuff. Sorry, Mace, I'm a philosophy major and therefore know nothing. Anyway, Nicholas brought up the strange story of the girl. Adam got interested and a couple of days later showed up on my doorstep demanding to know everything about my powers and if I had an alibi for the murder."
"He must have matched his database to the student list at the university." Mason says without opening his eyes. "So, what next?"
"I read him the riot act and called security." Cass replies. "But he must've talked to Nicholas, because a couple of days later Nicholas tried to ask me the same questions. He knew I was a New Mutant before any of this happened, but now he was afraid, suspicious, even angry at me for having these powers."
She breaks off suddenly, leading Mason to prompt her: "What did you do?"
Cass blinks back tears and looks straight at him. "What do you think, Mason? I killed him."
The Story
He waits for a moment, until his vision clears and he's swallowed the resurgent muck in his mouth, until he can stare her straight in the eyes and know the truth. This has been the game from the beginning with him, the game of no friendship without the potential for blackmail, no conversation without information. Perhaps, over the years, he has lost more than he has protected through this constant poker game of relationships, but, one way or the other, he has always been right, always made himself be right, in his judgements of others. Studying her eyes now, he smiles and knows that he has been right all along. "What really happened?"
"How can you do that?" Cass says indignantly. "I killed him, Mason. Adam said so, Jake said so, the police reports... well, they didn't want to believe it, but they pretty much said it as well. They were all there. They knew him and they saw his body. They knew what I could do, I did it, and I killed him."
Mason disagrees. "If you did, it wasn't murder. We all do stupid things sometimes. Stupid and cruel things that make us lose people we love. I think Nicholas died a terrible, tragic death, Cass, but it was an accident."
"How do you know?"
"Because I know that I've been in that position, and I've lost my wife and..." He breaks off. "And because you're risking your life to save a man you barely know. Not many murderers will do that."
She says nothing in reply, but hugs him closer. After a moment of deliberation, she sets out on a different key. "Who were they? The people you said you loved? I was right, wasn't I? He was one of them."
"Adam?" He says in surprise. "Yes, he was, for a second out of a lifetime."
"Come on, tell the story." Cass presses.
Mason coughs and clears his throat. "Nothing much to tell. He was drunk, totally stoned, after his girlfriend left him. He'd thought she was the one, you know? I suppose we thought every girl we ever kissed was the one in those days. Anyway, he deliberately picked a fight with the biggest guy he could find. I let him get pummelled before I got him out of there, carried him home."
"Is that where you got your scar?" Cass traces the line on his cheek.
"It didn't get dangerous enough for that." Mason grins. "Anyway, he told me he loved me, so I told him I loved him too, about a second before he fell asleep for the better past of the next week. It wasn't him, you know, it was the idea of being young and free and ready to die over a bottle of beer. We never quite got that feeling back after that night."
"How romantic." Cass checks it off on her fingers. "Number two?"
"My wife." Mason says after a pause. "We'd known each other since we were kids, drifted apart, stumbled across each other again later on. We got married very young, loved each other very much... and I haven't seen her for the last sixteen years."
"My turn to ask what happened." Cass says in curiosity.
"This happened." Mason gestures at his body. "Incident X, Adam's little experiment gone awry. I lost my immune system, I would have died if it hadn't happened in a laboratory. Even so, I lost weeks out of my life in a coma until they decided to bring me back. Adam and my wife... they loved me so much they couldn't bear to just let me die, but not enough to realise that they weren't bringing back the man. They brought back the monster."
"You're not a monster." Cass objects quickly. "Don't even think that."
Mason shrugs. "I love my wife, Cass, but how do you live like that? I don't mean sex because, hell, we had three children who made that pretty much impossible even before it happened. But I was so scared of everything... I couldn't hold her, couldn't wipe away her tears. My son believed I was a demon who had taken his father away. How do you live like that, Cass?" He sighs and continues. "We had arguments, horrible arguments. One day I just left for work and never came back. I knew they were leaving, and they did."
"You haven't seen them at all?" Cass asks in disbelief.
"I have a lawyer who sends them money. He knows where they are, but I've never asked him." A thought occurs to him. "My son could be at your university and I wouldn't even recognise him."
"If he looks anything like you, I think I'd have remembered." Cass nods. "Okay, what about number three?"
Mason closes his eyes. "I... My brother. Markie. Marcus, really, but he died before he ever got such a thing as dignity. He was my twin, but we never really looked alike. He was forty minutes older than me, and it could have been forty years." He expects an interjection from Cass, but none is forthcoming. "He died when we were seven years old, the one day it snowed near our house in the whole of that winter. Markie had a cold, but I made him come outside anyway. I'd been away at boarding school and wanted nothing better than a snowball fight to chase away all that regimental order. It took us down to the lake, which our father had checked was thick enough to stand on. I don't know how, but he was wrong. Dad was never wrong, had made a career out of it, but at that moment the ice was a little thinner. Markie fell through..." He shivers and resumes his narrative.
"Markie fell through, and I've never been able to remember anything else. Mom told me, right before she died, that she found us lying on the ice sheet, frozen and blue with the cold. She thought we were both dead, but she found my heartbeat. And she found these." He awkwardly pulls up the sleeves of his jacket and shirt, revealing the traces of white, jagged scars running from wrist to elbow on the inside of his arms. "The judge at the inquest said I was a brave boy for trying to save my brother. My parents... well, the only son they had ever wanted was dead. Dad was never wrong, you see, so it had to be my fault. I had to have killed my brother."
"Mason, you say I'm not a killer." Cass says. "Then you're not either."
"Oh, I am." He objects, frustratingly rational. "I was trained to be one by more military and intelligence agencies than you even know exist. I've shot, stabbed, strangled and poisoned people. Hundreds of men and women have died on my orders. Hundreds more following my orders. The only woman I ever really loved and the best friend I've ever had both think I'm a sociopath. Perhaps I am... But I didn't kill my brother. I know that, even though I don't remember it, because I loved his life more than I ever loved my own."
A silence. Cass taps her watch. “Okay, that’s all I had to know. This night should be over by now, the amount of hell it’s had crammed into it. Why don’t they just come and kill us already?”
Mason frowns, plants a hand on the floor and struggles up to his knees. “You were right, Cass. We’re not dying here. I didn’t survive the rest of my godforsaken life to end up spilling my guts all over some warehouse floor. Christ, I was trained better than this.”
“Mason, there’s no way out.” Cass hugs her knees. “Unless Adam comes…”
“Adam be damned.” He raps a knuckle against his forehead, making himself think. “For both of us. You have to use your powers.”
“No.” The reaction is instant. “I killed Nicholas. I almost killed Adam. I’m not going to do that to anyone, no matter how much they might deserve it.”
“Cass.” He presses his hands against the sides of her head. “Cass. You don’t deserve it. Don’t let the voices win, Cass. Don’t let them in. I did. That’s why I’m here. But I want to go home, Cass. I don’t want to die for Bryan Erskine, or for Adam, or for Marcus. Don’t die for Nicholas. You didn’t kill him, Cass, your powers did. You were on a bike with no brakes and you fell off. Gotta get back on.”
She stares at him hopelessly for a moment as the words hit home, then turns away with a smile. “I don’t believe you just said that.”
He shrugs. “What can I say? Beneath this freakish exterior, I have a freakish interior.”
Cass pulls herself to her feet. “Whatever you say, mtb boy.”
The metal latch on the door is pulled back roughly, and Erskine enters, slamming the door against the wall and walking quickly towards where Mason is kneeling, pointing his pistol at the dying man’s head. “Get up.”
“What’s the point?” He mutters.
Erskine aims a toe at his ribs, sending him to greet the concrete floor, but not hard enough to break bones. “Get up. And you, get back.” He directs Cass to back up against one of the side walls.
Mason hops to his feet, stonily regarding Erskine. “I wish I could say it was nice to see you again, Bryan. But sadly you’re still the megalomaniacal imbecile you were.”
“Excuse me, but, do I know you?” Erskine asks in feigned innocence. “No matter. Time’s up.”
He pulls the trigger and, as expected, blows a ragged red hole in Mason Eckhart’s skull. Unexpectedly, Eckhart stays standing there, the look of puzzlement on his face stretching into a glaring smile as he reaches up a hand and pokes a finger through the wound. “Missed me.” He says in a sudden bout of inane laughter. “Try again.”
Stunned, Erskine takes a step back, pulls the trigger again, the bullet ripping through Eckhart’s shirt, slowly changing its colour to a deep, sticky red. Still, the pale man does not fall, his smile widens, and he walks slowly, purposefully towards Erskine. “What the hell are you?” Erskine asks in horror.
The pale man cocks his head to one side, so that Erskine can see right through his skull to the wall beyond. Erskine stares at him in wonder, watching a trickle of blood run down his cheek… And Mason Eckhart punches his lights out.
Mason falls to the ground along with Erskine, knuckles bloody, but body otherwise intact. Cass hurries forward to disentangle him from the unconscious Erskine and grab the terrorist’s gun. “Not bad, huh?”
Mason leans against her as the room spins once more. “Can you use that thing?”
“This is one extra-curricular class I did go to.” Cass nods. “Are you ready?”
He nods. “It’s time to get the hell out of Dodge.”
The Fates
His heart crashes into his ribs and for a second his body forgets how to breathe as Adam stops dead, the red laser target flickering past his eyes to land squarely in the centre of his forehead. Slowly raising his hands to shoulder level, he wonders what good it would do to scream out some last words to Emma, Jesse, or whoever is listening. The chances, he knows, of anything he can do in this moment of red-lit darkness doing anyone any good are too small for most men to even contemplate. Adam's brain, however, can do the maths, has already done the maths years before he ever stepped into this ragged road off the edge of town and the oily puddles at his feet. More than anyone, he is certain that the next word he speaks may very well be his last.
"Slowly." A curt word from a German voice. From the bulky form behind the gun, Adam remembers it belongs to Stephan Doswald. "Take off your coat."
Adam nods slightly to show that he understands, peels the wet jacket from his arms, taking care to make no sudden movements. Finally, he throws the leather coat to the ground, three feet away from where he is standing. "What now?"
"Who are you?" Stephan demands. "You're not a cop, to come here with no weapons."
"My name's Adam." He replies in a measured, reasonable tone. "I came here looking for my friends. Maybe you've seen them."
"You're looking for them?" Stephan smirks. "Fine. You can join them. Come here."
Adam keeps his hands in the air, paces the metres towards the doorway where Stephan stands, outlined in shadow, and passes him. As Stephan turns to follow, Adam kicks out, overbalancing, but bringing Stephan and the gun to the ground. He scrabbles desperately to pin the German down, pushing his face into the muck, but hears an overly familiar click at the back of his head before Alex Doswald knocks him out.
-----
"Where do you think they are?" Cass says, ducking down under the cover of the car as Mason tinkers with its electronics. "This is like one of those freaky movies, you know, where the kids get all scared, then relax, then the guy with the mask, knife and serious Oedipal issues jumps out at them."
"Well, there's a simple solution to that." Mason says through gritted teeth.
"What?"
"Don't relax." A spark flies, and the engine starts, a sound too loud in the darkness behind the warehouse. Mason sits up abruptly and throws himself over to the passenger side. "Drive!" He whispers urgently.
Cass climbs in, slams the door and makes it into fifth gear before they have left the empty carpark. Mason takes out the gun from his pocket and twists around to see if anyone is trying to stop their escape, but sees nothing. He turns back and closes his eyes. "Christ. Get me back to GenomeX, and don't stop for red lights."
"Fine. You can pay my ticket." Cass looks at him and grins. "Hey, that was something, wasn't it? I did okay, right?"
Mason shrugs. "I don't know what you did, but the look on his face was certainly something I don't see very often."
"That's because you're dealing strictly in reality." Cass explains. "Fortunately for me, people remember their dreams, fantasies and, best of all, nightmares as well. Mr. Erskine there just happened to have a few freakouts with you as the main character stowed away. I showed him some outtakes from the Mason Eckhart horror show. And don't even get me started on the bunny ears... Hey, what the hell is this?"
Mason opens his eyes and sits up. "Police line. Slow down or they'll shoot out the tyres."
Cass duly obliges, as a squad of police edge their way towards the car. Mason roots around in his jacket and sticks his hand out of the window, holding one of his many security clearance badges. The squad leader grabs it at arms length, then steps back to study it. After a minute of deliberation, he hands it back and leans in the window. "Everything all right there, sir?"
"Everything wonderful, Lieutenant." Eckhart replies, wilfully ignoring the blood and dirt on his clothes and face. "And I do believe you'll find your men..."
Suddenly, the radio in the car crackles into life. "Mason Eckhart. Who would have believed that you had a friend. Are you listening, Mason?"
Mason picks up the receiver and switches to transmit. "I'm here."
"Good, good." Erskine says. "You know, you should have said something. We could have gone over old times. I just didn't recognise you, what with you not looking anything like Andy Warhol."
"What's he talking about?" Cass asks in a confused whisper.
"I am talking, my dear lady, about the present situation we are all in. To wit, I have here a very nice man by the name of Adam who seems to be under the impression that he doesn't have a surname. Now, if you don't convince the local constabulary that they really should let us go, he'll be missing more than that."
Mason checks his watch. 3.25. "Let me talk to Adam."
"Mason?" Adam says in a strangled voice. "I'm not worth anything they make you do."
Mason glances at Cass, then speaks. "God only knows, Adam, you're right. But Lieutenant Ferguson here tells me that, as the authorities want Mr. Erskine alive, they're ready to negotiate."
"A likely story." Erskine intervenes. "Let me speak to the negotiator."
"He isn't here yet." Mason says calmly. "They had to wake him up. He'll be here in five minutes."
"Fine." Erskine says in false levity. "In five minutes, your friend dies. Speak to you soon."
The radio crackles into silence, as Mason switches it off, checks his watch, and turns to the police officer. "You'll find Erskine and his friends at the plastics warehouse."
Ferguson nods and runs back to the line to coordinate his men. "What about Adam?" Cass demands. "They'll never get there in five minutes. I know he's not my best mate, but you can't just leave him to die."
"Get us out of here." Mason points down the street. Reluctantly, Cass taps the accelerator and drives slowly past the riot police. "I may not always love you." He whispers under his breath, a smile playing on his face as he flicks his radio on and selects a random frequency. "Mutant X? Mutant X? I know you're listening. This is Mason Eckhart, and I need you to respond now."
"Eckhart?" Emma De Lauro's voice, indistinct but recognisable, comes over instantly. "What have you done with Adam?"
"Saved his life, I hope." Mason replies. "Your people need to get to the plastics warehouse out on the edge of town within five minutes. I've done all I can." Without waiting for a reply, he turns off the radio and throws it into the back seat of the car.
"What was all that about?" Cass asks, speeding away from the scene into a largely abandoned city.
"God only knows." He grins with his eyes closed against the pain. "I may not always love you... But as long as there are stars above you, you never need to doubt it. Sums up our younger days, really. Codes and karaoke."
"I really hope you're not telling me that today's most advanced encryptions are all derived from Beach Boys songs." Cass glances at him.
"No. Most of them come from Hall & Oates." A pause. "That was a joke."
"Right." Cass nods, eyebrows raised. "Do you think they'll get to him in time? And isn't Mutant X the name of a comic book?"
"They're good kids." Mason sighs. "And I gave him a chance, if nothing else. He saved my life once, now I've returned the favour."
"You've decided you might be alive after all then?" Cass asks as the forbidding stone structure of GenomeX appears through the windshield. "Well that's good, because I'm going to need an access code to get in here." There is no response. "Mason?" She stops the car a foot away from the sturdy metal barrier blocking the road and turns to find him unconscious, face whiter than usual, breathing shallow. "Shit." She says with some emphasis before jumping out of the car and tearing around to open the passenger door.
Cass frees him from his seatbelt and checks his pulse before taking a breath and bending down to pull him over her shoulder. "Bloody hell." She says, standing up and almost overbalancing as she kicks the door closed with an extended foot. He is surprisingly light, even apart from his pale, thin exterior, but the progress up the steep road towards GenomeX is slow. Cass checks her watch, bites down on her lip, and tries to think happy thoughts.
-----
The first sign Alex and Stephan Doswald have that anything in their textbook hostage situation is not playing by the rules is when the roof caves in. As the wood and corrugated iron falls to the ground raising a pyre of dust, they shield their faces and take a tentative look upwards to find something blacking out the stars. At that instant a plume of smoke materialises into a man, and Jesse Kilmartin knocks their heads together, yelling into his comlink as he does so. "Two down."
"Check." Brennan Mulwray, above in the Double Helix, confirms. "Wait, Jesse..."
"Hands in the air, son." Bryan Erskine says clearly, gun pointed at the back of Jesse's neck. "I can shoot you faster than you can pull your tricks."
"Wanna bet?" The familiar feline figure of Shalimar Fox jumps down from the roof, eyeing up Erskine's already battered and bruised face.
Erskine cracks a painful grin. "I don't believe you're working for Eckhart."
"They're not." The black-clad figure of Adam stands in the doorway. "They're working for me."
"Aw, shucks." Erskine mutters. "Then I guess you're the man to kill."
In the time he takes to turn and attempt to pull the trigger, he has no bones in his hand not matching the consistency of mush.
-----
"You'd think this place might have one of those 'You are here' signs." Cass declares loudly to an audience of no one but the security camera in the metallic hallway. "Put that in your diary. OK, this looks like an interesting door." She punches the requisite large red button and is hisses open, revealing a sterile medical lab. Cass dumps the still unconscious Mason Eckhart on the table and checks to see that he is breathing. "Brilliant. Now what?"
No response is expected, but after a cursory look around the unfamiliar equipment, she closes her eyes for a long moment, attempting to connect to the faint and confused subconscious of the man whose life she is trying to save. It does not take her long to find the necessary memory. His eyelids open as if weighted down, and he stares at her without recognition. "Cass..." He says finally in a tone barely above a whisper.
"Enough with the conversation, Mace." Cass fixes her gaze on him, making him concentrate. "Which of these needles am I supposed you stick in you?" He closes his eyes, would attempt a frown if he had the energy. "Look, if you don't tell me I'll just guess. It'll be your fault if I give you rabies."
A faint smile that she may be imagining appears. "NYX."
"NYX?" Cass turns around and gets down on her knees to rummage through the steel cabinets containing genetic samples in about as much of a logical order as the returns bin at her university library. The searched-for vial, when she picks it up, contains only a clear liquid, and she checks the code several times before finding a sterile hypodermic needle and pulling up the sleeve of his jacket. Against his pale skin and white childhood scars, the blue veins are distinct enough for her to be fairly sure of hitting the right area. "Look, if I kill you, I'm sorry."
"You won't." He whispers, opening his eyes as she sinks the needle into his arm. Once it has been withdrawn and binned, Cass sits up on the table and takes him in her arms. He is cold, but no longer shivering. "What's the time?" He asks through dry lips.
Cass checks her watch for what seems like the thousandth time in an hour. "Five past four."
He would laugh at that if he could. "Figures." He says, then: "You had better go."
"Well, I do have that essay to do." She smiles, laying him down and standing up. "You'll be all right?"
"I'll be fine." He says with his eyes closed.
Cass bends down to kiss his forehead. "Goodnight sweet prince." She turns towards the doors, which open as she approaches, but stops as a thought occurs to her. "Call me." She says, and leaves.
-----
Outside on the hillside, the rain has started again, but Cass takes the walk slowly, tramping through puddles on the tarmac with sudden enthusiasm. As she sees an overly familiar figure sitting on the hood of her car, she slows down almost to a stop.
"Is he okay?" Adam asks.
"He will be." Cass halts, then cocks her head to the side. "And you?"
"I'm fine. We all are. Thank you." He nods.
"Thank Mason." She retorts. "I would have left you to the bullet."
Adam smiles. "Yes. With good reason, I suspect. But I meant thank you for waking me up tonight with that dream. If you hadn't, Erskine would have got away, and Mason might be dead."
She looks at him stonily, pushing past him to get into her car. "I don't know what you're talking about." She slams the door and puts the car into reverse, but winds down the window an inch. "Anything I did, I did for him. You've still got a lot to prove, Adamski."
Adam shrugs good-humouredly. "You're probably right."
"Sweet dreams, Adam." Cass gives a mock salute, and pulls away into the darkness.
-----
He wakes up feeling sick and looking worse, smelling alcohol on his breath and rainwater in his hair, cursing himself for the inevitable hangover for a moment before the steely surroundings of GenomeX reactivate his memory. Instinctively, he looks at his watch. 5 a.m. Two hours or so before anyone from this section turns up for work. Two hours to kill off the man and find the monster within his plastic skin, organic implants, and more of the drugs he can feel burning through his blood. For one of the few times in his life, he wants to cry.
With resolute intent, he stands up to the mirror, studies in detail his pale, but human face, framed by unruly brown curls, and stares himself in his storm blue eyes. Standing absolutely still, he lifts the electric razor to his head and begins to shave off his hair.
The Future
Three days later...
He does his very best not to look bored as Dr. Harrison pleads his case - a similar one to the case he had been pleading yesterday, only with slightly different wording and a few more names of dispensable underlings thrown in - whilst eyeing the security profile he has had on his computer screen for the last 48 hours.
Anna Cassius. 22. Parents both alive, but divorced. No siblings. No significant other. No children. Lives in a flat with six other students in the city. Attends the city university, studies Philosophy and is expected to graduate near the top of her class. A remarkably clean criminal record for a student, he notes grimly, with no mention of Nicholas Thompson. Adam's doing, of course. There are some secretarial notes about a mistaken death certificate which causes no concern. After all, the bureaucratic errors of the city mortuary have never been counted on one hand.
Attached is the background report filled in by an over-eager intern with nothing better to do and no questions to ask. Friends? Many, but none close. Smokes? No. Drinks? In moderation. Drugs? No. General opinions of her friends and workmates: a smart and likeable kid with family troubles and, at times, an attitude problem.
Well, Mason, he thinks grimly, you've finally found yourself the perfect girl. He glares at his reflection in the monitor and finds Harrison looking at him expectantly.
"You haven't found the missing security footage." Mason states. "Someone broke into your lab and used a needle, but no drugs, and you have no idea who. My, we're doing well this morning."
"Mr. Eckhart..." Harrison visibly squirms. "I'm sure there's a rational explanation."
"I'm sure there is." Mason replies. "And may I guess that it has something to do with security guards forgetting to replace the tape, and you forgetting to lock your doors. Yes, what is it?" He asks the fresh-faced agent who has just entered the office, looking even more tense than Harrison.
"Sorry to disturb you, sir." The agent says, eyes fixed on his own shoes. "There's a young woman here wanting to see you. She, um, says she's your girlfriend."
Harrison watches Eckhart like a hawk to make sure whether he's supposed to laugh or not. Mason blinks. "While I don't see why that concept would be so hilarious to you both, you are correct in this instance. Mr. Byrne, escort the young lady from the premises."
"Oh, I'm a lady now, am I?" Cass walks in, shoving Byrne out of the way with some force. "What does a girl have to do to get a guy to call her? You know, maybe I should have waited, but all those scenarios were going through my head. You know, maybe you put my number in the washing machine. Or you died in some freak microwave accident. So I figured that I'd come hunt you down."
Mason stares at her in complete silence for a moment longer than necessary before remembering where he is. "Ah, Dr. Harrison, Mr. Byrne, you're dismissed."
The two men scramble to get out of the room first, the door hissing closed after them. "I'm waiting." Cass folds her arms.
"I..." He suddenly can't look at her. "I didn't want you to see me like this."
"Ah, stuttering." She nods. "The native eloquence of us fog people. And how are you looking worse than when I last saw you?" She crosses the room to stand next to him, behind his desk. "Still badly dressed. Still looking like death warmed up. But this time you're not bleeding out of your ears, so that's an improvement." Cass turns around to look out over the main concourse. "Nice view."
He gets to his feet, not entirely sure what he intends to do, and she takes his gloved hand before he has a chance to recoil from her touch. "I'm sorry." He says limply.
"You should be." Cass frowns at the stasis pods aligned in a circle below them. "Eighty six for that essay I didn't even write? What were you thinking? My average is ninety."
Mason shrugs. "There are no facts, only interpretations of facts."
"You said that." Cass turns towards him with a sly smile. "Interpret this." She pulls his head down to her level and kisses him full on the mouth, refusing to let him go until he responds.
He wonders when the last time was he did this, anything like this, from a romantic kiss to making out like a teenager, and remembers the perfume of Danielle Hartman as she kissed him out of pity in one of GenomeX's silent, anonymous corridors before hurrying off to meet Adam. He doubts if the moment meant anything to her, if she would remember it now. Feeling the warm lips of a beautiful girl on his, he makes himself forget the memories of a monster.
They part and stand, a little embarrassed, a little stunned, neither one keen to check down below for spectators. "Well." Cass says. "You're the first boyfriend I ever had who tasted of antiseptic." He has to laugh, and she touches his plastic-coated cheek. "See, I knew you were in there."
He bites his tongue, but can't stop himself grinning. "Are we still on for Friday?"
"Indeed we are." Cass notices her own face on the monitor. "Well, I see that you know where I live, so there's no excuse for getting lost."
"OK." He nods, still smiling.
She turns to leave, but reconsiders, drawing him close to kiss him once more. "Now go shove a needle in your arm." She squeezes his hand, and jogs out of the room, no doubt late for a class.
Mason switches off his computer and leaves a minute later, in search of Dr. Harrison. The man has beaten the game, and Mason Eckhart has finally found someone worth the pain.
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The Sun Never Sets on PureMX.net
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