Next few weeks flew past quicker than he had expected. During first week people were still up and running their daily chores. Legacy was on the news, but they dubbed it as a formerly unknown strand of influenza. Stay home, drink plenty of liquids. Have an aspirin. During second week first whispers of the true nature of the sickness could be heard, not through official channels. A doctor from a small free clinic managed somehow to print flyers and spread them in the subway. In those he described the symptoms, and told the whole, ugly truth. There was no cure, and the disease was, in fact, lethal.
He didn’t know what had happened to the good doctor. He had been there, waiting for the train and watching him handing out the flyers when police had showed up and taken the doctor away.
After third week it was apparent to everybody. There was no cure. There was no way to avoid infection. Once you felt the first chill tremors of the fever you’d die or go insane. He wasn’t all too sure of which outcome he’d prefer. Rest of the population didn’t seem to care. People were still dying. Survivors were wandering around the streets, attacking anything and everything that moved, including themselves.
He found the girl by accident at the end of the third week.
Drunken stupor was a preferred state. To maintain it was becoming increasingly difficult. Nobody sold the booze anymore. He had been hunting up and down the streets for a bar, a liquor store, a drug store... Hell, he would have taken anti-freeze for cars if anybody was offering. Unfortunately it seemed that any kind of mind altering substances were sold out. Few stores still up and running were mainly selling canned goods, and stocks of them were rapidly diminishing as well. His mood was foul, as foul as the weather. Steady torrent of rain stopped every now and then only to make way for a sudden hailstorm. It was one such storm that made him seek shelter from a dark alley to his right.
As he dove in to the darkness, hoping to find a shelter of sorts he quickly realized that he wasn’t the only one who had had the same idea. The alley was already occupied by two, burly men. At first it looked like they were fighting over a pile of rags, but when the weather suddenly cleared a bit he could see what was happening.
A girl lay on the ground, fighting for tooth and nail. She was losing the battle. There was no way she could have fought off two grown men. She was kicking and scratching. She was cussing and screaming.
At first he was going to leave. Quietly. It really was none of his business what those freaks were up to. Then the girl screamed again. She wasn’t screaming for help. She was screaming out of rage and frustration. She still had fight in her. Out of curiosity he took a deep breath. He could smell the foul stench of Legacy from both of the men. They were already deep in the throes of insanity. He could smell faint scent of fever and nausea radiating from the girl as well. Yet there was something different in her.
“Oh, crap... I’m really not going to do this, am I?” He huffed. Then stood up.
“Hey! Assholes!” His voice boomed from the surrounding brick walls. It didn’t seem to frazzle his adversaries. They didn’t spare a glance to him. They were too deeply engrossed over their prey. And the girl screamed again, this time for help. At least she had heard him.
It was easy to dispose two lunatics. It was hard to resist the urge to tear them literally in to shreds right in front of the girl. It wasn’t their fault, it wasn’t her fault that the world had gone straight to hell and that he was now completely sober, first time for well over two weeks. Yet it took a physical struggle to keep the claws in and just snap necks from the two men.
Sudden clarity became almost bearable when he recognized the girl. She was from Xavier’s.
“They never gave us that quiz...” She whispered when he crouched next to her, then promptly passed out. Legacy had been pestering her for the past three weeks, but it was starvation that brought her down. Something that could be easily corrected.
He patted down his pockets. Found the item he was looking for, a bar of chocolate. Then cursed his own stupidity. If he gave her anything to eat now, she’d only choke. He pocketed the half melted bar, then grabbed the girl instead and stood up, hoisting her to his arms. She weighed next to nothing.
She was shivering. And slowly gaining her bearings. Soon she was able to stand on her own wobbly feet.
“You’re Wolverine.”
“And you are?”
“I’m Rogue.”
“What kind of a name is Rogue?” He asked, bored of the cloak and dagger –policy. As useful as it had proven in the past, there really was no point to it anymore.
“My name is Marie,” the girl said.
“My name is Logan.”
“You don’t have anything to eat, do you?”
He gave her the chocolate. It was clearly an effort to open the fragile foil wrapping, but she managed it on her own as they walked. He really hadn’t had a clear plan of what to do with her, but there had to be a reason for her surviving the plague that had killed off 99 percent of the world’s population. That alone made him curious. And while she wasn’t the most talkative companion he found her presence somehow comforting.
It started to rain again. He gave the girl his jacket. It was wet, but leather would protect her from the ice if a hailstorm broke out again.
“Come on, kid. It says no parking here,” he said when the girl stopped and leaned against a traffic sign.
“You know... Your jokes really suck...” She whispered.
“Yeah. I’m not much of a comedian. But I’m guessing that you don’t even expect witty conversation now?”
“Nope... Getting to someplace warm and dry would rank higher on my wish list...”
“That’s on my to do –list. That look okay to you?” He pointed towards a large office building. The girl stared at it for a moment, then turned to look at a classy looking hotel on the other side of the street.
“What’s wrong with that hotel?” She asked.
“It’s not a good place to go, trust me.”
“Okay. The office it is, then. They do have coffee makers and snack vendors in there, right?”
“I’d think so.”
He didn’t know what had made him choose the office instead of the hotel, but it soon became apparent that it was the right decision. As they sat in the darkened room on a couch that one could have called almost comfortable, a man with a laptop was approaching the hotel. As they watched the man reached with his right hand, all casual as if he was hailing for a taxi. The whole hotel got swallowed by a something that looked like a sheet made of mercury.
“A tech.”
“What?” The girl asked.
“A tech. I have seen those before. I have seen that silvery stuff before. Once you touch it you’re gone.”
“Gone? As dead?”
“As gone. I don’t know what it does, but it covers you completely and then you just disappear.”
They sat and observed, both chewing on peanuts and chocolate they had raided from a vendor just outside the room they had chosen. It didn’t take longer than few minutes. At first they could see the clear outlines of a massive building from beneath the silvery sheet, then suddenly the sheet collapsed to the ground and there was nothing left. Just an empty lot, surrounded by buildings that obviously held no interest to the tech that simply left.
“What are we going to do now?” The girl asked. He thought about it for a moment, then scratched the back of his head.
“I don’t know...”
“We have to do something!”
“You’re sick. You’re probably going to die anyway. We’re both going to die. Me... I was just going to see how long it’ll take.”
Again silence fell. Then the girl turned to look at him.
“You’re not a nice guy, Logan,” she said. There was a shimmer of tear in her eyes.
“It’s not easy to be a nice guy in this world, kid. Being nice only gets you killed sooner.”
“But I don’t want to die!” It was a scream born out of rage.
“Tough luck, kid. Looks like you’re fresh out of options.”
She turned to look at the window that he kept staring. They could see their faces reflecting back from the silvery mirror.
“Fucking techs...”
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