It started to rain. Again. He hunched his shoulders and shoved his hands in to his pockets. Lowered his head and stole a glimpse from the girl that was trudging alongside him through the deserted city. She was shivering. They’d have to find a shelter soon. He had already given her his jacket several hours ago when first drops of rain had fallen.
“I guess that Xavier wasn’t as smart as you thought he was…” The girl whispered, her feet sloshing in the muddy water around them.
“No shit, Sherlock?” Logan asked and wiped his forehead to get rid of small streams of water that trickled over his eyes.
“Or you could have been… Uh… Less cryptic, you know? I bet that you made up part of those words, and nobody understood what you tried to warn them about.”
“I wasn’t making stuff up, kid. I was in a hurry. I needed to get us out of there. Timmy died that afternoon, and there were at least seven other kids dying at med-lab. I wasn’t going to wait for us to get sick!” Logan growled. Marie sneezed.
“Well, I am sick now…” She said and wiped her nose with the back of her hand.
“You got flu. If we had stayed any longer you’d be dead. So quit your fucking whining and move your ass. You’re going to get pneumonia if we don’t find a shelter soon.”
“Fuck you, Logan…”
“Fuck you, too, darling.”
In all honesty he could have taken his time to explain things properly. There really was no rush. People were already dying, few hours or even few days wouldn’t have made any difference, but he had had a sudden urge to get going, like it was more important to get away, like it was more important to get on to the road than try to stop the disease.
Ugly truth was that he was afraid. Afraid of the cost of stopping Legacy. At first it had seemed impossible. Legacy was running rampant, and something, or somebody was bending the reality, fabric of the universe. People, buildings and whole cities were disappearing and distorting, leaving behind traces of strange silvery substance that was crawling with the virus and had corrosive effect. They managed to find the source of the virus as well as the culprit for disappearances. A mutant of sort, capable of travel between alternate universes. Unfortunately General William F. Stryker, head of bio weapons program of U.S. Armed Forces had found the mutant first and was using it to manipulate the world around them, trying to erase mutant population.
“We could have gone after Timmy,” Marie said.
“We could have…” Logan admitted.
“I could have drained him. We would have to worry over Legacy now, we wouldn’t have to keep thinking if we’re still around after Stryker’s next attack.”
“Yeah. And you could be you. Or you could be just like Timmy, making all of us disappear one after another. Draining Timmy sounded a bit too easy solution, there has got to be a catch…” Logan started, not sure which one he was trying to convince, Marie or himself.
“Too easy? Draining Timmy to death would have been easy? Logan, pull that head of yours out of your ass, I’m not sure if I heard you right through all that shit you’re spewing!”
“I’m not saying that it would have been easy for you! It wouldn’t have been easy solution to any of us! I don’t want to kill that kid any more than you do! But killing him would have left us facing only Legacy, and it was only a matter of time before Jean would have found a cure. I’m sure that Stryker has something up in his sleeve, just in case something happens to Timmy.”
“Or Timmy is his ace, perfect backup plan if Legacy failed! Have you thought about that?” Marie asked, already sounding more tired but every bit convinced that professor Xavier’s original plan of erasing Timmy from the equation was still their best option.
“I have thought about that. I have thought about many things. I haven’t been sleeping so well lately, with all the thinking I have been doing. And no matter what way I look at things, killing Timmy would probably at least help us a bit, but we’d lose you for good, and I’m not ready to give up on you, kid. So shut the fuck up. I don’t want to hear about it if it involves you sacrificing your life just so that the rest of us might get through this shit a bit easier!”
He was soaking wet, tired and angry, but more than anything he was frustrated. The whole deal with Legacy and Timmy who was now better known as Techno-Mage had only started couple of weeks ago, but Logan felt like it had been going on forever. Like he had been banging his head against the brick wall that Stryker had built for better part of an eternity, always failing, picking up the pieces and starting again. And he was rapidly losing his will to go on.
“Have we been here before?” He asked, eyeing No Parking –sign with suspicion.
“Don’t touch it,” he then said when Marie was about to lean on it. Instead of supporting herself against slightly rusted metal post Marie grasped a hold of his arm, gazing him questioningly.
“It’s dirty and cold,” he explained, then ushered the girl further from the spot before stopping again and turning to look at the sign once more.
“Come on. It says no parking here.” The girl let out watery chuckle. She really was tired, his pitiful attempt of a joke wasn’t that funny. He’d have to find some sort of shelter soon. He couldn’t let her die over exposure, not after all they had gotten through already.
He shook his head. It felt so real. He was teetering at the brink, small nudge and he’d tilt over.
Public buildings were deathtraps, he knew that very well. But there seemed to be nothing wrong with the upscale hotel. It felt empty. Smelt slightly dusty and deserted. Nothing wrong. Absolutely nothing.
“We can’t stay on the ground level. Pick a suite. Any suite. It’s on me,” he said, pretending to reach his wallet. The girl wasn’t pretending anymore.
“You know… Your jokes really suck…” She wheezed. He crouched and picked her up on his arms.
“Yeah. But you didn’t tag along because of my dazzling sense of comedy.”
He pinched the bridge of his nose. Marie was staring at him. He felt like he should explain, but he didn’t know how. He didn’t know even if he’d be able to speak anymore. His sinuses felt clogged up, and strange electric buzz made his teeth itch.
Silvery tendrils were spreading, reaching for them. They were everywhere, leaving puddles of mercury at their wake, making terrain slippery and hazardous. There was no place to hide, nowhere to run. He tried anyway. He couldn’t feel his feet anymore, soft tissues had dissolved and he was running on bare bones, adamantium coating clinking sharply against pavement. Numbness was creeping up, at first he couldn’t feel his knees, but all too soon he lost all the sensations from below his waist and fell heavily on to their silvery grave, burying the girl underneath his heavy carcass.
He fell on his hands and knees, gasping for air that felt thicker than syrup all of a sudden. Pavement was cool and wet against his burning palms, water soaked through his jeans and small pebbles were burrowing in to his flesh. From the corner of his eye he could see silver. Silver tsunami approaching rapidly, swallowing the world around him.
“Logan? Are you alright?” He could hear Marie’s voice, but it was muffled, as if she was speaking from underneath water.
They were dissolving. For some reason he could still see, first to go were all the soft tissues, leaving bare bones behind. Skin, muscle and organs simply vanished, then bone started to turn porous, small holes appearing and growing bigger, eating away the girl from underneath him. Plastic sheet hadn’t been enough to keep her safe and he could only scream when last piece of her skull faded away right in front of his missing eyes.
“Soft spot. Right behind that door. Don’t open it.”
He struggled to get grasp of reality. Images and sensations were drowning him.
“Run! Marie, fucking run!”
It wasn’t a tsunami. It was a bubble. Large bubble cocooning them and there was no escape, it was closing in and soon they’d be gone, just like…
…before. This all had happened before. At some time, somewhere before he had been kneeling, trembling from fear and exhaustion, just waiting for it all to be over. He had done this before. Many times now he had done this, in all imaginable universes, in all imaginable times with all variations, and not once had he succeeded in beating the odds.
“Not again… Not again!” He pushed with all his might, rising from the ground and reaching for the girl, grasping her hand and dragging her in to alley left of them. He had tried to hide there before, but not once had he noticed a door on the wall. Fire exit of the hotel, hidden behind trash cans.
“Logan, what…” Marie started to ask, but he didn’t have the time to answer, he sliced the lock of the door and pushed it open, throwing them in just in time to avoid flurry of silvery tentacles. Door slammed shut behind them and he could hear loud crashing sounds, trash cans exploding from the sheer power of the silvery substance.
“What…”
“Shush, it’s out there,” Logan silenced Marie. For a while they both lay on the tiled floor, not moving, not blinking their eyes, not even breathing. And there was no sound to be heard from outside.
“I don’t think…”
“Hush, kiddo.”
“Logan, what ever you think it’s out there… I didn’t see a thing. First you were screaming on the ground and next you were dragging me here, and that wasn’t very nice, I think I sprained my ankle and…”
“Shut up, I’m trying to listen!” Logan hissed.
Again silence fell. And nothing was happening. Logan sat up slowly. Marie followed carefully and together they stood up.
“What the hell happened?” Marie finally asked. Logan shook his head.
“I don’t know. I… I was here. I was somewhere else. And here. At the same time. And that silver shit was creeping up on us. You didn’t see it? Feel it?” He asked.
“No. I’m just cold and wet. Can we please find a place to stay for a while? I think that I’d like to get some sleep. In real bed. This is a hotel, there’s tons of real beds upstairs, you know? You’re starting to ramble and hallucinate, I think some rest would do good to you, too.”
“I wasn’t…” Logan started to protest, then decided not to. He ushered Marie deeper in to the bowels of the building, away from the potentially hazardous fire exit.
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