Chapter 6 - Continued
His thoughts were scrambled, but she began to pull pieces together. Son of Bolivar Trask, a precog - he knew it, his father the mutanthater knew it, but his father didn’t know Larry knew - who’s powers were nullified by the medallion. It was different than the collars. They were sophisticated, high-tech and controlled. They suppressed the mutant gene and that was all. This medallion was twisting Larry’s mind. He had no idea who he was anymore.
This created a whole new dynamic to how things would play out. Was he going to step up? Be the hero? Did he hate daddy dearest for sending him away from Genosha, for forcing him to fend for himself, to fight who he was inside? Had he joined S.H.I.E.L.D. as a grunt hoping to work his way up and then destroy the organization from the inside? Or was he here because he, too, was a mutophobe? Rachel had heard it happen before - they were the scary ones, worse than Magneto and the Brotherhood. The mutants who hated their power so much, who were cursed with some debilitation, that rather than control it or use it for good, they fought to end mutation for others. It was a plague that they had suffered, and they were the activists, the Roes turned Wade. Rachel cringed, because that had almost been her. The heat on her back increased in intensity.
It was time to test the waters. Rachel reached out with her mind and ripped Guard number 3’s arm from his socket, a telekinetic force that pulled down on his hand swiftly, like an elephant tied round a cord and dropped from a bridge. The opening play, to test where Larry’s loyalties lay.
The wall behind her began to melt and crumble, and Rachel continued to turn the heat up. Macabre was 20 feet away, staring in horror at the man dripping blood from his shoulder. Rachel would have found that abhorrently cruel thirteen years ago. 1999, when this all began - she was only 16 years old then, and naïve to how disgusting the humans could be. Now, survival meant survival. And those who turned traitor no longer deserved the kid gloves she wore as an X-Man. Larry had still made no move.
“Hurry, over here! Can you move?” Guard number 1, their leader, was motioning Macabre towards him. Rachel made her nod, and then slowly walk to him. Not too eager, nothing to arouse suspicion. The wall collapsed behind her, alarms went off up and down the border, and Rachel made her move.
Macabre reached up and elbowed the guard in the face. She twisted the gun in his hand, firing three shots into the armless guard before wrenching the gun away. Another shot, square into Guard number 2’s head. Another behind her into the boss’ stomach. It was down to her and Larry.
Rachel’s legs were taking her around back, towards the Sentinel tunnel. Her mind, however, was latched onto Larry. He was hesitating. Was he waiting for help from the Sentinels? Or did he want to escape from S.H.I.E.L.D.? Damnit all, but why couldn’t she read his mind?
He raised a gun and pointed it at Macabre.
“I’m a mutant!” she yelled. “Like you!”
“I know,” he said flatly. And shot a bullet into her eye.
Shit. He took off running, and she lost telekinetic sight of him. If Mastermold didn’t kill him with the greenswitch, the Sentinels would at least always know where to find him. She doubted Larry Trask had figured out how to remove those things, when not even the smartest mutants knew how they worked.
Unless dear old dad was in on the entire thing. It was a question for later. She had about 30 second to make her move.
Trask’s thoughts had given her the entire network of tunnels connecting the borders of Canada and New York. The Phoenix came alive inside of her, large wings of fire unfolding from her back, lifting her into the air. Her back arched with life, her eyes rolled back into her head, and her hands spread open with each finger reaching for a different star. She was finally free, free from her body, an observer of her own fate. The Phoenix knew what to do. Rachel could not control it.
Talons of fire grew from the wings as the large neck stretched above her head. She was engulfed in fire; she was fire; she was reborn. Her entirety became the body of myth. The great bird flew down into the tunnel, less than a second before a Sentinel rushed up to greet it. Pieces of metal, melted at the bird’s touch, reformed in the Canadian air and shattered. Shrapnel and wiring chased her down into the tunnel, unable to reach her speed. She was going too quickly to be tamed, too powerful to be collared.
Another one, unaware of her presence, passed through the inferno. It was breathtaking, a stunning display of fireworks and destruction, of nature’s power to destroy man. And who deserved that destruction more? The lining of the tunnels, Trask’s pride and joy, were torn off like leaves of grass, reflecting the light from the opening above. The path turned, and the bird reared its head back and called ahead, a warning to those who still wanted to fight. But the Sentinels did not hear.
One by one they passed, and one by one they were stripped down to their soulless frames. A body entering the sun’s flame, a death too fast to notice. They could not warn their friends. The computers fired, clicked, whirred, and triggered, but it was after the fact. By the time they processed, the Phoenix had passed. In an instant, the armaments and extensions and plans laid down by Mastermold were gone. In an instant, she was brought to New York City, to the abandoned subway tunnels. In an instant, the Phoenix had passed.
She could ride this up to the Baxter Building. She could face Mastermold on her own. And she would die. It had taken less than two dozen Sentinels to quell the fire inside her mother. There would be two thousand above, and Rachel did not feel like playing odds. With one wing she knocked down the tunnel ahead, barring it in rocks and rubble, with the other wing she crushed a brick wall to her right. Having created a sanctuary, a resting place for Rachel, the Phoenix suddenly withdrew into her body and Rachel came crashing to the ground.
The voices coming from the town were overwhelming. Kitty saw stalls lining the main streets, selling all forms of trash. Nothing looked familiar, or new, or worth what they were being sold for, certainly. And that’s when she noticed.
“Gambit!”
“Yeah, chaton, Gambit know too. Just keep your head low, and don’t say anyting, ok?”
“But…how can this be?”
“Shhh - if you can understand dem, dey understand you. Tu comprends?”
A swarm of language surrounded her, all from different regions of the world, most of them entirely foreign to her. Nothing that sounded like the French she had just barely passed in middle school, and failed at Xavier’s institute. Nothing that sounded remotely like it belonged to her world, her time. And yet she understood everything.
“Gambit, what are we even looking for?” she asked under her breath, keeping her eyes focused on the ground.
“A way back. But first, maybe a way to blend? In here, chaton.”
Kitty looked up and saw a man wearing a turban standing in front of a tent. His beard was so thick it looked fake. He was hawking fabrics, in a tongue that had guttural sounds she was sure not even Wolverine had ever made. But she understood it perfectly.
“Fine silks! I have every color in the world, the dyes of India and Africa. Perfect for regal attire. Cheap!”
“C’mon, chaton, phase us inside.”
“Working on it - we’re gonna be caught.”
“Someting tell Gambit deese people ting dey see a ghost.”
“Feels good to touch! For no money you can look like the Queen of Babyl-”
She felt the cool air of the tent on her arm, and quickly dragged Gambit inside behind her.
“Now what?”
“We get dressed. It’s ok, chaton, you don’t have to ask. Gambit let you sneak a peek.”
He was becoming intolerable. Regardless of whether or not he had a nice body.
When Rachel awoke she immediately scanned for sentient thought while reaching for the Phoenix force. She didn’t know how long she had been unconscious, and any manner of things could have snuck up on her while she was out of it. There wasn’t anything living, and no sounds suggested Sentinels. She was safe - maybe.
The hole in the wall. Right. The sewers. She had blasted away a wall shared by the subway and the sewers so that she could find the Morlocks. She didn’t know what to expect. She has seen death, but from her understanding of this, she was searching for a massacre. Genocide couldn’t be that hard to hide.
Almost five minutes in and she already found the first body. Another corner, and dozens more lined the ground. They stretched further than she could see.
My god…
Her body temperature began to rise with anger, the smell of death overwhelming her senses. She didn’t know what she could do, but she had to do something. Sweat began to form on her forehead. Why was she here? Bodies of hundreds of mutants, some even faces she recognized, sank into the floor. She tried to walk around them but every step was a sharp crack of bone, a gush of flesh. Her face became more flush as she moved, as she went deeper into the carnage. It was nauseating, it was repulsive, but she kept moving. She needed to figure out why. Why Gambit? Why had this happened? The heat continue to increase.
It happened spontaneously and without impetus. The Phoenix force broke free again and spread its wings around the bodies. Rachel saw what was happening but couldn’t control it. The light began to burn hotter, whiter. It burned past her control. Her body, the center of the bird’s essence, began to convulse in tears. There was something she could do, after all.
Her eyes could not see past the fire in front of her. It was a lightning strike, a supernova of soundless light. And as if on a switch, it became blacker than black.