The Peak to Pandora's Box- later Sunday
And once again, Kitty was in space. Sure, it was a satellite above Earth, but still, it made her a little nervous. Other things were making her nervous, too.
"I don't want to make you nervous," Hank told her as they got to the Peak. "But he has more experience fighting the Brood than anyone. He survived alone on their home planet for years, hunting them. They're terrified of him. I just assumed you had been in touch."
"No," Kitty admitted, feeling more than a little guilty. "I couldn't commute with anyone, and... Look, I understand why he became a double agent for SWORD. They helped his people, and I know what SWORD does is important and all that, but he was like my pet and my best friend in one, and to know he kept all that from me... I felt so betrayed, and then I got trapped on a giant bullet and shot into space, and..." Ugh, she shouldn't have butterflies in her stomach when she didn't technically have a body right now. "I guess it's time to put on my big girl pants and do this, huh?"
Hank led them to a lab, where SWORD people were working on SWORD things, and a little purple dragon was hanging out. The others hung back at the door, and let Kitty go inside on her own. "Lockheed?"
Lockheed turned to see her. Kitty?
Oh, that was weird. She'd always had a sort of link to Lockheed, but the fact that she could actually hold a conversation with him, with words... She sort of felt like she should send Pete Wisdom a "sorry I didn't believe you about my dragon talking" card.
"You're looking well," Kitty said, leaning against a table.
You look different, Lockheed said.
"It's the suit, isn't it? Look, about why I haven't been in touch-"
Oh, no, you don't have to explain it to me. You've been busy with important things.
"Now wait just a minute, mister," Kitty countered. "I'm trapped in an intangible state! I've been stuck in a tube, not out clubbing! And what about you? They don't have email on the world's most advanced space station?"
I'm not the one who got all huffy about me having a life that didn't completely revolve around her, Lockheed said, grabbing a bottle of something from a shelf.
"Now that is not fair and you know it-" Kitty frowned. "Wait a minute- is that whiskey? Are you drinking now?"
Here we go. I'm a hundred and seventy years old! I can have a drink if I want to!
"A drink? That bottle's almost empty!" Kitty said.
Maybe it was that way when I got it!
"Oh? Is that why you smell like Wolverine's sideburns on a Sunday morning?"
What else am I supposed to do when my best friend won't talk to me?
"Why should I think you want me to talk to you when you're up here with the people you walked away from me for?"
They both glared at each other... and the fight ended, just like that. Lockheed wrapped himself around her, and she hugged him back. "I missed you too, you little stinker."
*****
Kitty had decided she hated space. That would happen when you'd spent weeks hurtling through it to your supposedly inevitable death, but when your return trip had you docking at a lonely, too quiet space station called Pandora's freaking Box where you were going to have to square off with parasitic aliens like something out of a Ridley Scott movie, Kitty was allowed to hate space.
"You do realize that by bringing a ship here we could be giving them exactly what they want," Storm pointed out as they docked.
"I do, indeed, Ororo," Beast agreed, going back towards the hatch. "Which is why this ship will self-destruct if it scans any Brood or Brood-infected life form on board. Everyone ready. I'm opening the hatch."
There was a brief pause to get prepared for the fight they assumed would be right on the other side of that door. Kitty had been able to get a hold of a gun that really should have been too big for someone of her size, but it'd take out Brood if she had to do that, and she really likely would. Now if only she could tamp down the nerves.
When Beast opened the hatch, there was nothing there.
"I expected something," Colossus admitted.
"Were I the Brood, I would lure us aboard, then spring an ambush," Storm said.
"Clearly. And yet we have little choice," Beast said, letting Storm fly on ahead and lead them into Pandora's Box. Seriously, why would they name this that? "I smell Abigail. Her scent's strong... tinged with fear."
"Do you smell anything else?" Storm asked.
"The Brood," he said, stopping by one door. "And death."
They filed into the room, which was filled with corpses. Some were in pretty advanced stages of decay, considering it hadn't been that long since the Brood first attacked. One soldier was suspended from the ceiling by some kind of goo. There were a lot of shocked curses from the X-Men, but there wasn't anything they could do but keep going.
"Abigail's trail leads here," Beast told them. This is the sector where they study radioactive materials... The doors are reinforced. She could have taken refuge inside. Unfortunately the only person with high enough security clearance to know the door's override commands is Abigail herself."
Kitty tugged at her glove. "Maybe if I phase through the keypad I'll disrupt it and it'll open..."
"Or it could short out in locked position," Beast pointed out.
"Well, Peter could knock it down, but that'd make a lot of noise..."
Lockheed made a sound a little like clearing his throat, and started pushing buttons on the door controls.
Beast frowned. "You have alpha-prime security clearance?"
But he was distracted from that a second later when the door slid open, letting them get to Brand and a few others. To her credit, she didn't look as shaken up as one might when they'd just had to lock themselves away from the Brood because they'd killed everyone else. "You're alive!" he cried, pulling her into a big hug.
"Actually at the moment I'm being crushed to death," Brand retorted. "What the hell are you doing here?"
"Ignoring protocol. Like you did when you went on your rescue mission," Beast countered.
"Is this everyone?" Storm asked, looking around the room. Four soldiers, two doctors in hazmat suits, and Brand. That was all that made it in here out of a station full of people.
"Everyone who's not dead," Brand confirmed.
"Then we should move," Storm said. "We have a clear path to our ship."
"Listen to me," Brand said forcefully. "You shouldn't have come. There's a reason we're all alive... that we were able to fight off the Brood and get in here. They didn't want to kill us. We're too valuable. Hank, we're infected. We're all hosts for the Brood. And if you don't leave now, you will be too."
"But you've developed a process to remove the larva, corrrect?" Beast said. "You can be cured."
"It's not that simple. The necessary machinery is highly specialized and uses materials not found on Earth. Yes, we could build new ones... but not before the Brood larvae completely consumed us," one of the scientists explained. "If we leave here without our equipment, we're as good as dead."
"The Brood may have destroyed it," Colossus said.
"No, they need it," Brand told him. "The Brood homeworld was destroyed during the Annihilation War. They're on the brink of extinction. They desperately need to reproduce. Using this process, the Brood could develop incubators, extracting the larva from its host and raising it to maturity externally, allowing them to reinfect a host multiple times. We leave here with that equipment, or not at all. You aren't in that same position. Leave us some guns and go. We'll call if we win."
Storm smirked. "Agent Brand, I am royalty. For an insult like that, I can have your head cut off," she said. "Now please... lead the way."
*****
It was suspiciously easy, getting to the equipment. The scientists were relieved to get to it, and as they started disconnecting things, Brand said, "You go."
Storm began to say, "It's your jurisdiction-"
"I'm infected with a baby slime monster," Brand reminded her.
"Excellent point. X-Men, watch the perimeter," Storm ordered. "All SWORD personnel, prepare the equipment for travel."
"Ororo," Beast said slowly, "earlier you mentioned what you'd do if you were the Brood. Would you perchance wait for us to go deep into the facility and prepare the tech you need for travel before attacking?"
As he said that, the Brood invaded. Large, demonic-looking reptilian aliens with tentacles, glowing eyes, and giant teeth had them blocked into the room, just like that.
"They're here!" Beast yelled. "Hurry up with that machinery!"
"Open fire! Everyone who's not on tech support, protect someone who is!" Brand added, doing just that.
Kitty had been on edge enough that she had no problem hefting her giant gun up to fire on them. It was probably xenophobic to say the Brood terrified her, but when they would absolutely violently implant you with an embryo that would manifest itself by taking over your body and turn you into one while simultantously killing you, and when they'd tried to do that to her once and it had sort of ruined her fourteenth birthday, that xenophobia was probably a little warranted. The SWORD people were firing, Colossus was easily punching through Brood heads...
"These are just soldiers!" Storm called over the fight. "Watch out for the queen!"
"There!" Brand said, keeping a weapon trained on the giant Brood queen.
"Not to rush you mean," Beast called, "but if we don't get moving soon we're all dead!"
"They're surging!" Storm yelled, flying above one Brood, trying to fight it. "Protect the perimeter! Don't let them through!"
"We'll do our best, but Lockheed can't breathe fire in close quarters like this!" Kitty yelled, firing on the Brood soldier Storm was fighting. "Not without hurting friendlies! We can't hold this position long!"
"Got it!" one of the scientists said. "We're clear, Agent Brand, but we can't move the machinery on our own!"
Colossus stepped directly between a Brood and the machine. "Do not worry, my friends. I believe I can solve this problem with one grand gesture."
And with that, he shoved the machine through a closed door, the scientists clinging to the machine for dear life, with Brand running after and the X-Men standing guard against the Brood.
"Everyone, follow me!" Brand ordered. "Storm, buy us time!"
"And now that I need not fear damaging the machinery," said Storm, twisting her hands in the air to get the winds going. "I loathe the taste of this canned air, but it reaches hurricane force quite nicely. I can't keep this up for long."
"Do so but a moment longer," said Peter, gesturing for the X-Men to back out through the door. Then he hefted the metal door he'd broken above his head, and slammed it back into place, with the Brood trapped inside the room.
They wasted no time in running after the others to the front of the ship, with Storm noting, "We'll need to change the settings to let Brood-infected people in..."
"It's done," Beast said. "All aboard!"
Once inside the sealed cockpit with the machine and SWORD personnel, Kitty still didn't feel at ease. Lockheed normally might have perched on her shoulder, but he stayed hovering in midair with a gun out, like he was waiting for something else, too. But Beast got into the pilot's seat and said, "Initiating liftoff. Abigail, radio the Peak. Tell them to blast this place to ash sas soon as we're clear."
"Hank... I'm sorry," Brand said, pulling off her everpresent sunglasses to reveal that her eyes and the area around them had begun transforming into a Brood. "But I can't let that happen."
The rest of the transformation was not only quick, but it took over the other SWORD personnel just as fast. Suddenly the X-Men were evenly matched with would-be aliens who very much would probably try to kill them in a minute. There was a lot of shouting and weapons being pulled- Kitty was not ashamed to say she'd never really let hers down that much- and finally Storm yelled out over the noise, "Agent Brand! Show me you are still in there! Give me some sign that you are still human!"
She didn't get an answer. What Storm got was advanced on a trio of former scientists hissing at her, and moving in for the kill.
"Goddess have mercy," Storm breathed, and lifted her hand to shoot lightning out at them. "I am so sorry we failed you."
"She's got the right idea, Lockheed," Kitty said sadly. "Scorched Earth time." There wasn't anything that could be done at this point. No one here knew how to get the Brood out of the hosts with the equipment, they couldn't let the Brood have it, and the Brood would kill them if they weren't stopped. The only thing they could do was kill the new Brood, and they'd have to call this a loss. So on that order, Lockheed breathed fire towards the soldiers that were left.
When it came to Brand, though, Beast threw himself in front of her. "No, you can't," he pleaded. "She hasn't changed fully yet."
"Henry, she has a gun pointed at your head," Colossus said calmly.
"Only so you'll listen," Brand said. It at least still sounded like her, even if aside from the green hair and the lack of tentacles, she didn't look human anymore. "My half-alien physiology lets me fight off the change, for a little while longer, anyway. It's not easy. I'm not suggesting you turn your back on me. But you have to believe me when I tell you this. You can't kill any more of the Brood."
"We have no choice, Agent Brand," said Colossus. "We tried to save them. We were too late. It is not too late for you."
"We'll lift off and blow Pandora's Box to atoms. Get you back to the Peak and cure you," Kitty offered.
"No!" Brand snapped. "Listen to me! I'm in the Brood hive mind, I know what they know! Their homeworld was destroyed, but it's bigger than that. The Brood, awful as they are, served as natural predators for even worse species. Now the interstellar ecosystem is out of whack. Those other species are breeding out of control. Before long they'll present a greater threat than the Brood ever did. Hank, think. Not as the Beast. Not as an Avenger. Not as an X-Man or my boyfriend. Think as a scientist."
Beast was very quiet for a moment. "She... She's right. We have to save the Brood."
"I'm sorry... what?" Kitty said. "This is the Brood we're talking about! They don't just kill to survive, they enjoy it! They sit and laugh while their kids eat people alive from the inside!"
"Katya is correct," Colossus agreed. "Seldom have I encountered such irredeemable evil. I say, let them die out. We will find alternative means to deal with the other species."
"Henry, few understand the intricacies of the natural order such as I do. And yet... If we repopulate the Brood, every being they kill will be our responsibility."
"Maybe not," Beast said. "I have a solution. One that preserves the interstellar ecosystem without imperiling sentient beings... and keeps us from committing genocide."
Kitty winced. Okay, when he used that word she felt bad, and she shouldn't, because they forced people to become incubators for their species and killed them and used their bodies.
"But it's highly risky," Beast continued. "And depends on us all playing our parts precisely. Abigail, given your compromised status..."
"Say no more," Brand said, finally lowering the gun she'd had on him. "On a 'need to know' basis, the chick with an evil alien baby in her brain doesn't need to know. I'll let you talk privately."
Beast's plan sucked. Like, it really, really sucked. In her current state, Kitty couldn't do the same thing that was expected of everyone else, which also meant that if everything went wrong it all came down to her. No pressure.
"It sounds mad," Colossus said, "but you have never failed us before, Henry. I am with you."
"As are we all," Storm said.
That was when Lockheed spoke up, going into a tirade that it was left to Kitty to translate. "He's... he's saying the Brood are evil incarnate, and not only should we let them die out, we should... uh, I'm gonna go with 'spit' on their graves. He says if you insist on doing this, he won't be part of it and he won't come save you when you've got baby Broodlings eating your livers. He's leaving... and he... he wants me to come with him." Oh, now her heart hurt. "Lockheed... I can't. I know it's dangerous, but Hank and Agent Brand are right. We at least have to try. I can't leave my friends."
"That's all you do," Lockheed shot back, and turned his back on her.
So once again, she was headed out on a risky mission with potential death at the end of it, and she and Lockheed weren't talking. When they set off, having recollected Brand, Kitty took up the rear and turned to see Lockheed watching from the bulkhead, but when it became clear she really wouldn't be going with him, he turned and flew off.
"Bye again, dragon," Kitty sighed.
"Kitty," Colossus said, powering down and putting a hand on her shoulder as the walked through the station.
"Don't, all right?" she asked. "Just... make it work. Make this something other than the suicide mission it sounds like."
"Katya," he said, "we will get through this."
Kitty looked over at him and saw a Brood queen directly behind him. Before she could even scream out a warning, the queen had stabbed him with one of her tentacles, and he dropped to the ground.
"No, Peter..." she said, wanting to kneel down and check on him but knowing it was stupid to take her weapon off the queen. "This wasn't part of the plan!"
"Stupid warmbloods," the queen hissed, more Brood emerging behind her. "Why return to a place where death awaits? Perhaps having removed our means to escape, you seek to kill us while salvaging the station itself. Or perhaps it doesn't matter!"
"A second Brood queen? How?" Beast demanded.
"Necessity," the queen answered. "We require young, so soldiers adapt into queens. We face extinction, mammal. To survive, we adapt. Had you not slaughtered our young so soon after their birth, they would have crushed you... as we will. We need offspring. You shall soon be one."
Cornered by Brood, Beast made a move away, only to end up with a tentacle in his chest.
"They need us as incubators!" Brand reminded them. "They can't hurt us too badly. We've got the upper han-" She trailed off into an ungodly pained noise.
The queen went after Storm next, pinning her to the wall with her tentacle, and the rest of the X-Men were down.
"Take them to the stasis chambers," one Brood soldier said. "Quickly, before they shrug off the venom."
"What of the one in the suit?" asked another.
Kitty felt one grab her arms from behind, probably positioning her for the queen to get her, too. "Joke's on you, sleazoid," Kitty said. "I'm stuck in an intangible body. I can't be hurt."
"Then I will expel you into space. To drift alone for all eternity. You are harmless."
"Helpless," Kitty agreed. "A helpless little girl... trained to kill by Wolverine." And then she was twisting around so that she could roundhouse kick the Brood in the face hard enough to knock it out. "Brand, you still one of the good guys?"
"As much as I ever was," Brand said dryly. "I'll rouse the others."
"No need," said Beast, from where a Brood was attempting to drag him off. "Were it any stronger, I imagine the venom would threaten the larva-"
"Fun with science later!"
Fighting off the other Brood to get Storm and Colossus back wasn't hard at all, and when one Brood tried to fight, it was admonished. "Retreat! There's nothing to be gained in battle! We've already won! All we need to do is prevent their escape. In due time, our children will speak to us... and their minds will be ours!"
This did not stop the X-Men and Brand from trying to get in the other direction from the retreating Brood. "She's right," Brand said. "So why don't you tell me why your master plan calls for allowing yourselves to get infected with Brood eggs?"
"It was that obvious?" Beast asked.
Brand sounded insulted. "I can tell when you're throwing a fight, Hank."
"The idea is for us to escape to the Peak, and use the machine we sent back in the shuttle to remove the Brood larvae from us," he explained.
"I figured that much. What I don't get is how that changes anything. The Brood young will still end up as evil as the rest."
"Not necessarily," Beast protested. "Once they're extracted, I believe I can use technology based on our Cerebra device to cut off their brains from the existing Brood hive-mind. That opens the way for more... suitable role models. The Hulk has an ally. A Brood creature who is not like its peers. One who understands friendship, and honor. That Brood creature we fought was right. They're doing what all beings faced with extinction do: evolving. They grow stronger. Soldiers develop into queens, able to lay eggs. But there are other types of evolution as well. Such as developing compassion. The ability to cooperate with other beings. To care about them, making it possible to coexist. Before he turned on us, our former colleague Bishop told me that in his future, there is a benign race of Brood in the universe. If we make this compassionate Brood the new template for a Brood hive-mind, we could create that race."
Brand rubbed at her head. "I have to admit, that's not completely insane. One thing: we don't need to find this friend of the Hulk's. There's a Brood creature right here on this space station."
"...What?"
"Having this Brood caterpillar in me is a two-way street. I know the things they know," Brand said. "Every once in a while, a Brood creature is born exhibiting kindness. They kill it, like ancient Spartans putting down weak babies. One was born here in this lab. Our scientists were curious to study it. When the other Brood escaped, some of them wanted to kill it, but the queens argued that in the face of extinction, all Brood life is valuable. So they left it in its stasis tube. Unable to bring themselves to murder it, but too disgusted to let it out. In Brood terms, it's young. A teenager. And a mutant of its species. If we free it, take it back with us, you could rasise it. Teach it caring and teamwork and leather pants and all the other cherished X-Men values."
"And through it, pass those values on to every new Brood creature born," Storm finished.
"If we can find it, rescue it and get it back to the Peak before the Brood larvae within us turn us into monsters," Colossus added.
"Sure, if you want to be all 'glass half empty' about it," said Brand.
[Taken from Astonishing X-Men #38 and #40. NFB, NFI, OOC okay!]
"I don't want to make you nervous," Hank told her as they got to the Peak. "But he has more experience fighting the Brood than anyone. He survived alone on their home planet for years, hunting them. They're terrified of him. I just assumed you had been in touch."
"No," Kitty admitted, feeling more than a little guilty. "I couldn't commute with anyone, and... Look, I understand why he became a double agent for SWORD. They helped his people, and I know what SWORD does is important and all that, but he was like my pet and my best friend in one, and to know he kept all that from me... I felt so betrayed, and then I got trapped on a giant bullet and shot into space, and..." Ugh, she shouldn't have butterflies in her stomach when she didn't technically have a body right now. "I guess it's time to put on my big girl pants and do this, huh?"
Hank led them to a lab, where SWORD people were working on SWORD things, and a little purple dragon was hanging out. The others hung back at the door, and let Kitty go inside on her own. "Lockheed?"
Lockheed turned to see her. Kitty?
Oh, that was weird. She'd always had a sort of link to Lockheed, but the fact that she could actually hold a conversation with him, with words... She sort of felt like she should send Pete Wisdom a "sorry I didn't believe you about my dragon talking" card.
"You're looking well," Kitty said, leaning against a table.
You look different, Lockheed said.
"It's the suit, isn't it? Look, about why I haven't been in touch-"
Oh, no, you don't have to explain it to me. You've been busy with important things.
"Now wait just a minute, mister," Kitty countered. "I'm trapped in an intangible state! I've been stuck in a tube, not out clubbing! And what about you? They don't have email on the world's most advanced space station?"
I'm not the one who got all huffy about me having a life that didn't completely revolve around her, Lockheed said, grabbing a bottle of something from a shelf.
"Now that is not fair and you know it-" Kitty frowned. "Wait a minute- is that whiskey? Are you drinking now?"
Here we go. I'm a hundred and seventy years old! I can have a drink if I want to!
"A drink? That bottle's almost empty!" Kitty said.
Maybe it was that way when I got it!
"Oh? Is that why you smell like Wolverine's sideburns on a Sunday morning?"
What else am I supposed to do when my best friend won't talk to me?
"Why should I think you want me to talk to you when you're up here with the people you walked away from me for?"
They both glared at each other... and the fight ended, just like that. Lockheed wrapped himself around her, and she hugged him back. "I missed you too, you little stinker."
*****
Kitty had decided she hated space. That would happen when you'd spent weeks hurtling through it to your supposedly inevitable death, but when your return trip had you docking at a lonely, too quiet space station called Pandora's freaking Box where you were going to have to square off with parasitic aliens like something out of a Ridley Scott movie, Kitty was allowed to hate space.
"You do realize that by bringing a ship here we could be giving them exactly what they want," Storm pointed out as they docked.
"I do, indeed, Ororo," Beast agreed, going back towards the hatch. "Which is why this ship will self-destruct if it scans any Brood or Brood-infected life form on board. Everyone ready. I'm opening the hatch."
There was a brief pause to get prepared for the fight they assumed would be right on the other side of that door. Kitty had been able to get a hold of a gun that really should have been too big for someone of her size, but it'd take out Brood if she had to do that, and she really likely would. Now if only she could tamp down the nerves.
When Beast opened the hatch, there was nothing there.
"I expected something," Colossus admitted.
"Were I the Brood, I would lure us aboard, then spring an ambush," Storm said.
"Clearly. And yet we have little choice," Beast said, letting Storm fly on ahead and lead them into Pandora's Box. Seriously, why would they name this that? "I smell Abigail. Her scent's strong... tinged with fear."
"Do you smell anything else?" Storm asked.
"The Brood," he said, stopping by one door. "And death."
They filed into the room, which was filled with corpses. Some were in pretty advanced stages of decay, considering it hadn't been that long since the Brood first attacked. One soldier was suspended from the ceiling by some kind of goo. There were a lot of shocked curses from the X-Men, but there wasn't anything they could do but keep going.
"Abigail's trail leads here," Beast told them. This is the sector where they study radioactive materials... The doors are reinforced. She could have taken refuge inside. Unfortunately the only person with high enough security clearance to know the door's override commands is Abigail herself."
Kitty tugged at her glove. "Maybe if I phase through the keypad I'll disrupt it and it'll open..."
"Or it could short out in locked position," Beast pointed out.
"Well, Peter could knock it down, but that'd make a lot of noise..."
Lockheed made a sound a little like clearing his throat, and started pushing buttons on the door controls.
Beast frowned. "You have alpha-prime security clearance?"
But he was distracted from that a second later when the door slid open, letting them get to Brand and a few others. To her credit, she didn't look as shaken up as one might when they'd just had to lock themselves away from the Brood because they'd killed everyone else. "You're alive!" he cried, pulling her into a big hug.
"Actually at the moment I'm being crushed to death," Brand retorted. "What the hell are you doing here?"
"Ignoring protocol. Like you did when you went on your rescue mission," Beast countered.
"Is this everyone?" Storm asked, looking around the room. Four soldiers, two doctors in hazmat suits, and Brand. That was all that made it in here out of a station full of people.
"Everyone who's not dead," Brand confirmed.
"Then we should move," Storm said. "We have a clear path to our ship."
"Listen to me," Brand said forcefully. "You shouldn't have come. There's a reason we're all alive... that we were able to fight off the Brood and get in here. They didn't want to kill us. We're too valuable. Hank, we're infected. We're all hosts for the Brood. And if you don't leave now, you will be too."
"But you've developed a process to remove the larva, corrrect?" Beast said. "You can be cured."
"It's not that simple. The necessary machinery is highly specialized and uses materials not found on Earth. Yes, we could build new ones... but not before the Brood larvae completely consumed us," one of the scientists explained. "If we leave here without our equipment, we're as good as dead."
"The Brood may have destroyed it," Colossus said.
"No, they need it," Brand told him. "The Brood homeworld was destroyed during the Annihilation War. They're on the brink of extinction. They desperately need to reproduce. Using this process, the Brood could develop incubators, extracting the larva from its host and raising it to maturity externally, allowing them to reinfect a host multiple times. We leave here with that equipment, or not at all. You aren't in that same position. Leave us some guns and go. We'll call if we win."
Storm smirked. "Agent Brand, I am royalty. For an insult like that, I can have your head cut off," she said. "Now please... lead the way."
*****
It was suspiciously easy, getting to the equipment. The scientists were relieved to get to it, and as they started disconnecting things, Brand said, "You go."
Storm began to say, "It's your jurisdiction-"
"I'm infected with a baby slime monster," Brand reminded her.
"Excellent point. X-Men, watch the perimeter," Storm ordered. "All SWORD personnel, prepare the equipment for travel."
"Ororo," Beast said slowly, "earlier you mentioned what you'd do if you were the Brood. Would you perchance wait for us to go deep into the facility and prepare the tech you need for travel before attacking?"
As he said that, the Brood invaded. Large, demonic-looking reptilian aliens with tentacles, glowing eyes, and giant teeth had them blocked into the room, just like that.
"They're here!" Beast yelled. "Hurry up with that machinery!"
"Open fire! Everyone who's not on tech support, protect someone who is!" Brand added, doing just that.
Kitty had been on edge enough that she had no problem hefting her giant gun up to fire on them. It was probably xenophobic to say the Brood terrified her, but when they would absolutely violently implant you with an embryo that would manifest itself by taking over your body and turn you into one while simultantously killing you, and when they'd tried to do that to her once and it had sort of ruined her fourteenth birthday, that xenophobia was probably a little warranted. The SWORD people were firing, Colossus was easily punching through Brood heads...
"These are just soldiers!" Storm called over the fight. "Watch out for the queen!"
"There!" Brand said, keeping a weapon trained on the giant Brood queen.
"Not to rush you mean," Beast called, "but if we don't get moving soon we're all dead!"
"They're surging!" Storm yelled, flying above one Brood, trying to fight it. "Protect the perimeter! Don't let them through!"
"We'll do our best, but Lockheed can't breathe fire in close quarters like this!" Kitty yelled, firing on the Brood soldier Storm was fighting. "Not without hurting friendlies! We can't hold this position long!"
"Got it!" one of the scientists said. "We're clear, Agent Brand, but we can't move the machinery on our own!"
Colossus stepped directly between a Brood and the machine. "Do not worry, my friends. I believe I can solve this problem with one grand gesture."
And with that, he shoved the machine through a closed door, the scientists clinging to the machine for dear life, with Brand running after and the X-Men standing guard against the Brood.
"Everyone, follow me!" Brand ordered. "Storm, buy us time!"
"And now that I need not fear damaging the machinery," said Storm, twisting her hands in the air to get the winds going. "I loathe the taste of this canned air, but it reaches hurricane force quite nicely. I can't keep this up for long."
"Do so but a moment longer," said Peter, gesturing for the X-Men to back out through the door. Then he hefted the metal door he'd broken above his head, and slammed it back into place, with the Brood trapped inside the room.
They wasted no time in running after the others to the front of the ship, with Storm noting, "We'll need to change the settings to let Brood-infected people in..."
"It's done," Beast said. "All aboard!"
Once inside the sealed cockpit with the machine and SWORD personnel, Kitty still didn't feel at ease. Lockheed normally might have perched on her shoulder, but he stayed hovering in midair with a gun out, like he was waiting for something else, too. But Beast got into the pilot's seat and said, "Initiating liftoff. Abigail, radio the Peak. Tell them to blast this place to ash sas soon as we're clear."
"Hank... I'm sorry," Brand said, pulling off her everpresent sunglasses to reveal that her eyes and the area around them had begun transforming into a Brood. "But I can't let that happen."
The rest of the transformation was not only quick, but it took over the other SWORD personnel just as fast. Suddenly the X-Men were evenly matched with would-be aliens who very much would probably try to kill them in a minute. There was a lot of shouting and weapons being pulled- Kitty was not ashamed to say she'd never really let hers down that much- and finally Storm yelled out over the noise, "Agent Brand! Show me you are still in there! Give me some sign that you are still human!"
She didn't get an answer. What Storm got was advanced on a trio of former scientists hissing at her, and moving in for the kill.
"Goddess have mercy," Storm breathed, and lifted her hand to shoot lightning out at them. "I am so sorry we failed you."
"She's got the right idea, Lockheed," Kitty said sadly. "Scorched Earth time." There wasn't anything that could be done at this point. No one here knew how to get the Brood out of the hosts with the equipment, they couldn't let the Brood have it, and the Brood would kill them if they weren't stopped. The only thing they could do was kill the new Brood, and they'd have to call this a loss. So on that order, Lockheed breathed fire towards the soldiers that were left.
When it came to Brand, though, Beast threw himself in front of her. "No, you can't," he pleaded. "She hasn't changed fully yet."
"Henry, she has a gun pointed at your head," Colossus said calmly.
"Only so you'll listen," Brand said. It at least still sounded like her, even if aside from the green hair and the lack of tentacles, she didn't look human anymore. "My half-alien physiology lets me fight off the change, for a little while longer, anyway. It's not easy. I'm not suggesting you turn your back on me. But you have to believe me when I tell you this. You can't kill any more of the Brood."
"We have no choice, Agent Brand," said Colossus. "We tried to save them. We were too late. It is not too late for you."
"We'll lift off and blow Pandora's Box to atoms. Get you back to the Peak and cure you," Kitty offered.
"No!" Brand snapped. "Listen to me! I'm in the Brood hive mind, I know what they know! Their homeworld was destroyed, but it's bigger than that. The Brood, awful as they are, served as natural predators for even worse species. Now the interstellar ecosystem is out of whack. Those other species are breeding out of control. Before long they'll present a greater threat than the Brood ever did. Hank, think. Not as the Beast. Not as an Avenger. Not as an X-Man or my boyfriend. Think as a scientist."
Beast was very quiet for a moment. "She... She's right. We have to save the Brood."
"I'm sorry... what?" Kitty said. "This is the Brood we're talking about! They don't just kill to survive, they enjoy it! They sit and laugh while their kids eat people alive from the inside!"
"Katya is correct," Colossus agreed. "Seldom have I encountered such irredeemable evil. I say, let them die out. We will find alternative means to deal with the other species."
"Henry, few understand the intricacies of the natural order such as I do. And yet... If we repopulate the Brood, every being they kill will be our responsibility."
"Maybe not," Beast said. "I have a solution. One that preserves the interstellar ecosystem without imperiling sentient beings... and keeps us from committing genocide."
Kitty winced. Okay, when he used that word she felt bad, and she shouldn't, because they forced people to become incubators for their species and killed them and used their bodies.
"But it's highly risky," Beast continued. "And depends on us all playing our parts precisely. Abigail, given your compromised status..."
"Say no more," Brand said, finally lowering the gun she'd had on him. "On a 'need to know' basis, the chick with an evil alien baby in her brain doesn't need to know. I'll let you talk privately."
Beast's plan sucked. Like, it really, really sucked. In her current state, Kitty couldn't do the same thing that was expected of everyone else, which also meant that if everything went wrong it all came down to her. No pressure.
"It sounds mad," Colossus said, "but you have never failed us before, Henry. I am with you."
"As are we all," Storm said.
That was when Lockheed spoke up, going into a tirade that it was left to Kitty to translate. "He's... he's saying the Brood are evil incarnate, and not only should we let them die out, we should... uh, I'm gonna go with 'spit' on their graves. He says if you insist on doing this, he won't be part of it and he won't come save you when you've got baby Broodlings eating your livers. He's leaving... and he... he wants me to come with him." Oh, now her heart hurt. "Lockheed... I can't. I know it's dangerous, but Hank and Agent Brand are right. We at least have to try. I can't leave my friends."
"That's all you do," Lockheed shot back, and turned his back on her.
So once again, she was headed out on a risky mission with potential death at the end of it, and she and Lockheed weren't talking. When they set off, having recollected Brand, Kitty took up the rear and turned to see Lockheed watching from the bulkhead, but when it became clear she really wouldn't be going with him, he turned and flew off.
"Bye again, dragon," Kitty sighed.
"Kitty," Colossus said, powering down and putting a hand on her shoulder as the walked through the station.
"Don't, all right?" she asked. "Just... make it work. Make this something other than the suicide mission it sounds like."
"Katya," he said, "we will get through this."
Kitty looked over at him and saw a Brood queen directly behind him. Before she could even scream out a warning, the queen had stabbed him with one of her tentacles, and he dropped to the ground.
"No, Peter..." she said, wanting to kneel down and check on him but knowing it was stupid to take her weapon off the queen. "This wasn't part of the plan!"
"Stupid warmbloods," the queen hissed, more Brood emerging behind her. "Why return to a place where death awaits? Perhaps having removed our means to escape, you seek to kill us while salvaging the station itself. Or perhaps it doesn't matter!"
"A second Brood queen? How?" Beast demanded.
"Necessity," the queen answered. "We require young, so soldiers adapt into queens. We face extinction, mammal. To survive, we adapt. Had you not slaughtered our young so soon after their birth, they would have crushed you... as we will. We need offspring. You shall soon be one."
Cornered by Brood, Beast made a move away, only to end up with a tentacle in his chest.
"They need us as incubators!" Brand reminded them. "They can't hurt us too badly. We've got the upper han-" She trailed off into an ungodly pained noise.
The queen went after Storm next, pinning her to the wall with her tentacle, and the rest of the X-Men were down.
"Take them to the stasis chambers," one Brood soldier said. "Quickly, before they shrug off the venom."
"What of the one in the suit?" asked another.
Kitty felt one grab her arms from behind, probably positioning her for the queen to get her, too. "Joke's on you, sleazoid," Kitty said. "I'm stuck in an intangible body. I can't be hurt."
"Then I will expel you into space. To drift alone for all eternity. You are harmless."
"Helpless," Kitty agreed. "A helpless little girl... trained to kill by Wolverine." And then she was twisting around so that she could roundhouse kick the Brood in the face hard enough to knock it out. "Brand, you still one of the good guys?"
"As much as I ever was," Brand said dryly. "I'll rouse the others."
"No need," said Beast, from where a Brood was attempting to drag him off. "Were it any stronger, I imagine the venom would threaten the larva-"
"Fun with science later!"
Fighting off the other Brood to get Storm and Colossus back wasn't hard at all, and when one Brood tried to fight, it was admonished. "Retreat! There's nothing to be gained in battle! We've already won! All we need to do is prevent their escape. In due time, our children will speak to us... and their minds will be ours!"
This did not stop the X-Men and Brand from trying to get in the other direction from the retreating Brood. "She's right," Brand said. "So why don't you tell me why your master plan calls for allowing yourselves to get infected with Brood eggs?"
"It was that obvious?" Beast asked.
Brand sounded insulted. "I can tell when you're throwing a fight, Hank."
"The idea is for us to escape to the Peak, and use the machine we sent back in the shuttle to remove the Brood larvae from us," he explained.
"I figured that much. What I don't get is how that changes anything. The Brood young will still end up as evil as the rest."
"Not necessarily," Beast protested. "Once they're extracted, I believe I can use technology based on our Cerebra device to cut off their brains from the existing Brood hive-mind. That opens the way for more... suitable role models. The Hulk has an ally. A Brood creature who is not like its peers. One who understands friendship, and honor. That Brood creature we fought was right. They're doing what all beings faced with extinction do: evolving. They grow stronger. Soldiers develop into queens, able to lay eggs. But there are other types of evolution as well. Such as developing compassion. The ability to cooperate with other beings. To care about them, making it possible to coexist. Before he turned on us, our former colleague Bishop told me that in his future, there is a benign race of Brood in the universe. If we make this compassionate Brood the new template for a Brood hive-mind, we could create that race."
Brand rubbed at her head. "I have to admit, that's not completely insane. One thing: we don't need to find this friend of the Hulk's. There's a Brood creature right here on this space station."
"...What?"
"Having this Brood caterpillar in me is a two-way street. I know the things they know," Brand said. "Every once in a while, a Brood creature is born exhibiting kindness. They kill it, like ancient Spartans putting down weak babies. One was born here in this lab. Our scientists were curious to study it. When the other Brood escaped, some of them wanted to kill it, but the queens argued that in the face of extinction, all Brood life is valuable. So they left it in its stasis tube. Unable to bring themselves to murder it, but too disgusted to let it out. In Brood terms, it's young. A teenager. And a mutant of its species. If we free it, take it back with us, you could rasise it. Teach it caring and teamwork and leather pants and all the other cherished X-Men values."
"And through it, pass those values on to every new Brood creature born," Storm finished.
"If we can find it, rescue it and get it back to the Peak before the Brood larvae within us turn us into monsters," Colossus added.
"Sure, if you want to be all 'glass half empty' about it," said Brand.
[Taken from Astonishing X-Men #38 and #40. NFB, NFI, OOC okay!]