FIC: Fantastic Angel [Dark Angel/Fantastic 4, genhet]
Title: Fantastic Angel
Author: Feygan
Artist: queenmidalah -- artwork
Fandom: Dark Angel/Fantastic Four
Character: Sue, Max, Reed, Johnny
Genre: genhet, action
Rating: teen (for wounds)
Word Count: 5020
A/N: This is a story for the 2013 Dark Angel Reverse Bang.
Summary: During a lab accident Sue contains a powerful explosion and is wounded. The only thing that can save her life is undamaged genetic material from her multiversal twin.
There was the sound of yelling coming from the lab followed by the crash of equipment being destroyed.
Another woman might have called the police. Sue ran straight through the doors, a force shield appearing in front of her.
"Victor, what are you doing?" she shouted, trying to catch his attention. She needed him to stop killing Reed with his bolts of electricity.
It looked like Reed was melting, his face twisted in pain as he huddled on the floor in front of von Doom. There were burns covering his arms where he'd raised them to protect himself. He looked weak, unable to completely hold his shape.
"Ah, if it isn't the Jezebel, come to rescue her darling beau." Victor's voice was distorted behind the metal mask, sinister and nothing like the man she'd once dated. He really had become a monster.
"Please, just stop," she said. She looked around, trying to get a read on the situation in front of her.
Reed had been working on one of his experiments all week, prattling on excitedly about neutrinos and causal effects. There was machinery spread around, blasted apart by von Doom as he indulged one of his electricity shooting temper tantrums. The air was filling with choking black smoke that was sucked up toward the hole von Doom had ripped through the ceiling.
As she watched, von Doom--not Victor, not anymore--shot another bolt of electricity at Reed with a mad cackle.
Reed screamed, his body arching and his mouth opening wide. She could see blue sparks leaping amongst his back teeth as his silver caps melted.
Something snapped in Sue. That was her husband being tortured in front of her. That was Reed.
It felt like something powerful moved through her, an impossible force that she could only aim, not control. Not so much a force field anymore as a force spear that she sent through von Doom with all her strength behind it.
He screamed as he was flung up and backward to smash against the four inch thick reinforced window. There was a bright shatter of glass and he was thrown out to tumble toward the ground far below.
Sue grinned in fierce satisfaction even as she dropped to her knees, panting for breath. She was sweating and shaking and her bones felt almost liquid from exhaustion. She had used too much energy and would be suffering from a migraine within the hour, but that was all right. Everything was going to be all right.
"S-Sue," Reed's gasping voice caught her attention and she forced herself to her feet. He needed her.
"Reed, are you okay?" She knelt down next to him, trying to see what all damage had been done. His face looked like a bloody and shattered wreck, but from experience she knew that it couldn't be that bad. Once he got himself back under control he'd be able to reshape his mashed features and she was sure he would be all right. What worried her were the burns on his arms and splashed across his chest.
"The ... machine ..." he gasped out, his hand flopping sideways to point.
She turned to look and realized where that humming-buzzing sound she'd managed to ignore was coming from. Reed's machine was destroyed, but still on. The sound growing louder and louder as power was gathered with nowhere to go.
"How do I turn it off?" she asked, looking down at him.
He closed his eyes, a single tear trickling free. "Too late. It's too late. Run. Save yourself."
He wanted her to leave him here to die alone. "No," she gritted out, rising to her feet.
The sound was getting louder and louder, and now she could feel something pressing against her skin, a pressure building in the room. It felt like heat against her face, but it was pure energy. It was going to blow.
"I love you," she told Reed. She staggered a little as she started walking, but she had a purpose and refused to stop.
"No," he begged, but she just gave him a smile and kept going.
It felt natural to position herself in front of his machine and raise her hands with her palms turned out. Her shield was wavery and weak at first, but she was stubborn and it grew in force. And when the machine exploded, a bright flash that had her closing her eyes and turning her face away, she held it.
Her bones were melting. Her hair was burning away. Sweat and tears were streaming down her face and it felt like all the air had been sucked out of the room. But she held it.
And when the explosion sunk away and the danger was passed, contained by her will and her stubborn refusal to give up, she felt empty. She had done too much. She couldn't do anything more. She was dying and there was no stopping it. But at least she'd protected him, the only man she had ever really loved.
As she fell, the sound of Reed's voice followed her down.
"Sue!"
* * *
It was lightly misting rain as she stalked down the Seattle streets with her hands jammed into the pockets of her tan jacket, a baseball cap pulled low over her eyes. She'd been out and about scavenging supplies, nothing too outrageous, just whatever she could fit into her backpack.
It was getting harder and harder for her to go out in public. She was the face of Freak Nation and too many people were able to recognize her from the news, which made it nearly impossible for her to help with the supply runs.
She did what she could when the walls felt like they were closing in on her and she had to get out. She tried to pick up a little bit of something every time, not that she had much choice, not when their little city within a city was nowhere near self-sustaining.
They needed things from the outside world. Which was why the more baseline human X-models were the ones staging the raids and foraging for goods. There wasn't a whole lot of other choice; plus they were all trained for infiltration.
She sometimes wondered if she should find her life weird. Instead, it felt strangely comfortable, more so than anything since slipping out of Manticore. Working with a unit, running ops, knowing that she wasn't alone because her brothers and sisters had her back. It was like fitting back into an old skin. Some part of her seemed to relax and even with all the danger she felt like she was coming home.
All those years of running and hiding, thinking that home would be a place. But home was people, her people, her own kind. All of them depending on her to do the right thing and protect them.
Then there was Logan. And how weird was that?
He was a completely normal human, but she loved him with an intensity that scared her sometimes. Enough that she wondered if there might be a flaw in her design, because her clone-sister had been stupid in love with a normal guy too.
Max pursed her lips and jammied down the sidewalk a little faster. She had places to be, people to do, and a bunch of people depending on her to be the leader. It was stressful and frightening and there were some days when she seriously wondered what she was doing. But it was her life and they were her family.
She refused to fail them.
The fence was in view and she was about to climb the nearest building so she could swing over when there was a strange sound, so deep she felt it vibrating through her bones.
Instinct screamed at her and she immediately tried to twist out of the way, but whatever was happening must have been messing with her inner ear. Instead of a graceful jump-hip-twist, she staggered, her feet nearly going out from under her when the ground turned to thick syrup beneath her.
The air was suddenly heavy on her lungs so she held her breath, wondering if some unfamiliar poison gas had been released. That sound throbbed through her and she felt a sharp pain in her left ear followed by a trickling sensation.
There were distant shouts and she couldn't help a sense of pride in her family wanting to save her.
But it was already too late.
Like some kind of crazy sci-fi movie, the air thickened around her, keeping her from staggering free. There was a swirl of light and air and that deep throbbing sound was all around her, passing through her, swallowing her up until the world was a blur.
She fell to her knees, but the ground wasn't there. The sidewalk had become murky and black beneath her, a maw swallowing her whole.
She might have screamed, or maybe it was a bitten off curse. It was hard to tell when she was falling and falling, the air pressing solid around her in an organ squeezing embrace she could definitely do without.
Max squeezed her eyes shut against the sickening rush of color.
Whatever weapon was being used, she didn't think she was going to be waking to Section cops guarding her bedside. Things were gonna be serious.
She fought to stay conscious, but it was a losing battle.
She dropped out for a little while.
*
There was classical music playing and the pillowcase beneath her cheek was soft flannel. There was a warm, purring weight against her hip and she recognized the presence of a cat.
She didn't open her eyes or tense her muscles, didn't betray that she had regained consciousness at all. She just tried to gather as much passive intel as she could manage.
There was the murmur of distant voices and the sound of pans clanking against a stove top. She could only hear with her right ear, the one currently pressed against the pillow, but she tried her best to make out what was being said.
"... can't believe ... looks just like her."
"Are ... sure ... good idea? What ... thinking?"
"She ... Sue. I ... save her."
Max was concentrating so hard on hearing what they were saying she almost missed the sound of the door opening. She had to fight to remain perfectly still and not change her breathing.
Whoever was in the room smelled strange, like old copper pennies and crushed earth. There was none of the musk of a human or animal, and the heartbeat she strained to hear was slow and ponderous, lacking the liquid rush she was used to.
There was the sound of a metal tray being set down on the table next to the bed followed by a weary sigh. "I'm sorry, kid. I don't know what he was thinking dragging you into this, but he really loves her."
She forced herself not to tense as the gravel-voiced man moved close, but all he did was scoop up the cat and walk away. The thud of his footsteps was heavy on the floor, then there was the click of the door closing.
Cautiously, she opened her eyes without moving around. There were most likely cameras watching her and it wouldn't do to let anyone know she was awake until after she had made her escape.
She was in a comfortably furnished guest room--all pale caramel colored walls and cream carpet. There were art prints of sailing ships and trapped sunsets. It was like something from a pre-Pulse movie and not the prison cell she was expecting.
Max assessed her current state. She didn't hurt anywhere and she hadn't been chained to the bed. The only damage was her blown eardrum, and she was fairly sure that would fix itself in a few days. Advanced healing was good for something at least.
Whoever had street snatched her obviously had no experience dealing with a transgenic. Otherwise there would be thick bars on the window and the door would be made of something stronger than wood.
Silently, she slipped from the bed. Her clothes weren't anywhere in sight, but she'd made escapes in a lot less than a pair of blue cotton pajamas. She was a little wistful about her boots though. They were her favorites.
The more aggressive "fight now" part of her nature urged her to find out everything she could about her captors by beating the information out of them. But if there was one lesson she'd learned in the last few years, it was that curiosity was dangerous and it was better to attack from a position of strength.
She would escape, then find out who her enemies were and how many. Then maybe she'd come back later with some X5s and maybe Mole and his Nomlies. They'd been itching for a fight.
The tray her captor had brought contained a covered plate with toast, crispy bacon, fluffy eggs, and a banana. Her stomach rumbled at the sight of the food, but she wasn't going to trust that they weren't trying to drug her. She snatched the banana though, peeling it and eating it in small bites to make it last.
Quickly tossing the room, she wasn't too surprised to find that it was absent of anything really useful. The drawers were empty and she would have better luck using her fists as a weapon than the nail file she found.
She kept the nail file anyway, just in case.
The window opened easily, letting in the stench of city air. There was also a lot of honking and car engines and for a second she was stunned by all the noise.
Max climbed out the window and stood on the narrow ledge looking down. She was high above an active city, one that fairly blazed even in the daylight with electricity and casual wealth.
She wasn't in Seattle anymore, though where she was, was a mystery.
Great. I've been sold overseas or something. Some place in Europe considering the architecture and the English on the billboards.
Max ran along the ledge until she found the fire escape. Then it was an easy leap and grab before she was racing down rattly metal stairs.
She needed information on her enemies. But first she would find some clothes and shoes. Then she'd come back and teach those fools why transgenics weren't to be messed with.
*
Several hours later she was wandering around in a daze, wearing clothes she'd stolen from an unsuspecting woman. Mugging people wasn't something she enjoyed, but it had to be done if she wanted to fit into this weird situation.
She'd pinched herself several times, but she wasn't dreaming: She was in a different world. One where the Pulse had never happened and the United States was still chugging along as a world super power.
And there were people with actualsuperpowers running around. Or flying around, which she wasn't sure how to deal with. The very laws of nature had been warped and turned all crazy.
It felt like she'd stepped into a comic book or something. And all she wanted was to go home, back where the world was sane and there weren't a bunch of mutants running around.
Irony, thy name is Max Guevera, she thought.
Walking the streets of this city, which turned out to be New York, she couldn't help being dazzled by what she was seeing. So much wealth and luxury, the like of which she had never seen in her life.
She covertly eyed the people she passed on the street, and it was weird. They looked as though they had never faced any kind of hardship in their entire lives. They'd never had to fight for food or clean water, never been beaten by the Sector Police when they broke curfew. They were happy and healthy and they didn't have any of the wariness that she was used to seeing.
There were neon signs lit up on buildings and everything looked strangely clean. The Pulse hadn't happened here. This was a city that hadn't experienced the panic and defeat of losing all hope that things would ever get better.
Her attention was caught by a loud "CRASH-bang!" and the amplified sound of malevolent laughter. People were screaming and running in terror, and through the crowd she spotted a guy in a green bodysuit with a ridiculous yellow cape brushing the back of his knees. He had what looked like a big fishbowl on his head.
There were flickers of light shooting from the fingers of his gloves and she thought there might be the outline of shapes caught up in what he was doing. Nightmare images of screaming mouths, skulls, and shattered bodies staggering and falling as their skin was melted away. Then she blinked and it all faded to gray, her mind automatically translating the images as nothing more than lies and refusing to see them anymore.
She kept far to the side, pressing her back against a wall as she tried to remain as inconspicuous as possible. She didn't want to be involved in whatever was going on here and this guy was none of her business.
Then the guy grabbed a preteen girl by her ponytail and put his hand against the side of her head. "Give me what I want or I'll melt her brain with my nightmare visions!" he shouted.
The girl screamed and kicked her feet as he lifted her up by her hair, then she froze. The cords in her neck stood out sharply as she stiffened in his grasp, her mouth opening wide as her eyes stared at something only she could see. Urine trickled down her leg as she hung in the air.
A growl escaped Max's throat. There was no way she could just stand by and watch something like this happen.
Even though she didn't know what his suit was all about, her eyes were drawn to the thin tubes connecting his stupid fishbowl helmet with the back of his suit. They were obviously important.
Reaching into her pocket, she pulled out the nail file and flung it with enough force that the blunt edge ripped through the tubes. There was a hiss of escaping gases and the guy stumbled, dropping the girl in the process. She scrambled away and was snatched up by a frantic woman that had to be her mother and was hurriedly dragged down the street.
There was a bright flare of light and flame zipping out of the sky to become a man in a blue bodysuit with a circled "4" on the chest. He punched the fishbowl with a flame swathed fist and there was a shatter of glass to reveal a sweat-soaked man that gratefully gasped for breath while cursing viciously at the same time, struggling against the superhero holding him.
"Shut up, you're not getting away," the flame guy snarled. He lifted his head and somehow his eyes met Max's and widened in surprised. "Hey!"
Police cars skidded up on the scene and Max felt it was time for her to go. She slunk back the way she'd come, not fast enough to appear as though she was fleeing suspiciously, but fast enough that she was all the way down the block and crossing the street before the flame guy realized she'd left.
Then he chased after her, a flying burning man yelling, "Hold up there!" at her.
She ran.
There was always something so freeing about using her full speed, running faster than a normal human could even imagine. Running so fast that the world both blurred around her and slowed down, her muscles moving smoothly beneath her skin as she hit her pace and leapt to grab the ladder of a fire escape and threw herself upward in a careless overarm pull until she reached the top and flung herself onto the rooftop, not slowing down an instant.
Her stolen sneakers scraped across the flat top and she didn't hesitate to leap off the roof to the building next door and kept on running. Her breath came in measured pants as her legs kept pistoning her forward, jumping from building to building, climbing when she had to and never stopping.
Because he wasn't stopping.
She could see the ghost of his flames reflected in the windows as she passed by, zipping after her.
"Stop!" he yelled. "Stop, please, I'm not going to hurt you!"
She came to a skidding halt on top of a building and turned to look at him. She wasn't going to be able to lose him, so she figured facing him down was the only option. "Why are you chasing me?" she demanded, her breath coming only a little fast. "I didn't do anything."
He landed on the roof in front of her, the flames seeming to be sucked into his skin. "You ... You look just like my sister," he said, staring at her rudely.
"Well, I'm not her."
He shook his head. "No, you're not, but she's the reason why you're here."
Max frowned at him suspiciously. Who the hell was this guy anyway? "What do you mean?" she asked.
He held his hands palm out toward her as though to prove he wasn't holding any weapons, which didn't mean much considering he was some kind of pyrokinetic. "My name is Johnny Storm. Sue is my sister. Her husband Reed is the one that brought you here."
"Why?"
Johnny came closer, but not too close, standing in front of her with a beseeching look on his face. "Because Sue is dying."
"And what does that have to do with me?" she asked.
"You're her genetic twin," Johnny said. "We need you to save her life."
Max edged away. She'd been part of this story before, and it had ended with Zack shooting himself in the head after bequeathing his heart. "I'm not sure I like this."
Johnny gave a harsh laugh. "I don't like it either, but it wasn't like there was any other choice. I just wish Reed had given you the option of saying no."
"Or how about letting me know what was happening at all?" Max said dryly. "This isn't my world. I don't know how I got brought to this place, but this isn't my world. Why should I help anyone?"
"Please." There was so much pain in his expression. He looked at her as though she was the only hope he had. "Reed shouldn't have kidnapped you like that, but we were going to ask you for your help, I promise. We weren't just going to use you without giving you an option to say no."
"I don't understand anything that's going on here," she said, hating the sound of her own bewilderment. "How did I even get brought here?"
Johnny shook his head. "It's hard to explain. Reed is a scientist, doing all kinds of science things. He made a machine that can reach into alternate Earths just so he could find you. There's hundreds of thousands of other-Sue's out there, but you are the only one that can save her life."
She'd never be fond of scientists, no matter how far away she got from Manticore. "I'm not with the trusting here, so how about a little more detail? How did he find me? Why did it have to be me? What's wrong with his wife?"
"My sister Sue was hurt when one of Reed's experiments was damaged by a guy name Victor von Doom," Johnny said. "She managed to contain the explosion, but she received a dose of radiation that's melting her from the inside out. Reed got her into stasis, but she's dying in her sleep."
It sounded completely insane. There was no way any of this was real and she wondered if she wasn't in a lab somewhere having her brain scrambled by psy-ops. Maybe she'd never really escaped from Manticore that second time. Maybe she was locked in a lab with her personality being rewritten and Freak Nation had never happened. It had all seemed absurd, but she'd just been so happy to be free and to have her family around her and an enemy they could understand.
What if none of it had been real? What if everything she knew was nothing more than a construct to recreate her as a good little soldier, willing to give up her blood and her life when she was asked?
"This is ridiculous," she said. "There's no such thing as superpowers. Did you really think I would believe some guy could fly around on fire? None of this is real."
"It's very real," he said, "and my sister is dying and you're the only one that can help her."
"Why me?" she asked. "Don't try to snow me, just tell me. Why me?"
"Because even though there's countless Earths out there, you're the closest genetic match to my Sue. It's the whole having superpowers thing, you know. We were exposed to gamma radiation, it's what gave us our abilities, but it changed us way past the molecular level." Johnny shook his head. "I don't really understand it myself, but the four of us have been changed to the point that we're completely different than we were before, our genes twisted and warped."
Max raised a skeptical brow. "Yet somehow I'm supposed to match your sister?"
"Yes. You're the only one. Reed says he needs to give Sue some kind of an infusion of your DNA to be able to save her." Johnny didn't hesitate, going down to his knees in front of her, putting himself at her mercy. "Please help my sister. I can't watch her die."
Max crossed her arms and glared down at him. "You guys snatched me up and brought me here against my will. You could do anything you want with me. Why are you even bothering to ask, flame guy?"
"Because I'm not a monster," he said. "I want to save Sue, but that doesn't mean we get to do whatever we want to you. All I can do is ... I'm begging you. Please help my sister." There were tears in his eyes and a hint of defeat to the slump of his shoulders. He was so afraid that she would turn him away, that she would say "No" and let Sue die.
Max felt a wrenching sensation in her chest. She wasn't seeing Johnny anymore, she was seeing Zack. She was seeing her brother offer up his life to save her. Dying so that she could live.
"I guess it's my turn," she murmured.
He blinked. "What?"
She shook her head. "Nothing."
She turned away from him and walked to the edge of the building, staring out at this strange city. She clenched her hands on the low metal rail and leaned far forward. The wind rose up the side of the building, causing her loose hair to fly up around her head.
"What do you need from me to save Sue?" she asked. "It's not anything that will kill me or anything, right?"
There was the scuff of him rising to his feet behind her, then the crunch of his boots as he came next to her. He leaned his hip against the rail and she couldn't help noticing how easy it would be to shove him over. "Bone marrow. That's all we need. Just some of your bone marrow."
"And what happens to me once you get it?" she asked just to make sure.
"Nothing," he said. "Reed flips on his crazy multi-universe machine thing, you go through back to your world, and you're a hero for saving my sister's life."
"It's pretty crappy that you guys didn't ask me before bringing me here," she said.
He shrugged and tipped his face back to catch the sunlight. "Even though Reed loves Sue more than anyone else in the world, he's not too great with people. He snatched you up before any of us knew what he was going to do." He snorted. "Ben was pretty pissed off. He's not all that into the idea of people getting their rights violated."
"I'm not that into being the one violated either," she said.
"Well, considering you're the perfect match for my sister, I don't like the idea of you being violated. I mean, you're practically my sister here. That's weird."
Max couldn't resist a faint laugh. "I'll go with you. I'll give up some marrow and save your sister. And then you send my ass home and you don't let that Reed guy snatch up any other people without asking permission first."
He flashed a white toothed grin at her. "I promise."
And she believed him.
* * *
Waking up. It wasn't something she'd ever expected to do again.
The light hurt her eyes and her throat was painful and dry. Her body ached in that way she recognized from her first stay in Reed's stasis chamber, which looked more like a glass coffin than she was comfortable with. But she was alive.
And the first face she saw was Reed's looking down at her. There were shadows around his eyes and he hadn't shaved in several days, but she was glad to see that he wasn't hurt.
"You look terrible," she rasped, her lips quirking up at the corners.
He smiled through his tears in that way of his. "You look absolutely beautiful."
Then Johnny was standing next to him, grinning at her and his eyes looked damp. Then Ben was there, and she felt happy to have her family close even as exhaustion was drawing her back down into sleep, real sleep this time, not a medically induced coma and a stay in the stasis chamber.
As her eyes slipped shut, she thought she saw her own face looking at her, but that must have been some kind of hallucination. She'd ask Reed about it when she woke.
Because she was going to wake up and everything was going to be okay. She believed it this time.
=THE END=
Author: Feygan
Artist: queenmidalah -- artwork
Fandom: Dark Angel/Fantastic Four
Character: Sue, Max, Reed, Johnny
Genre: genhet, action
Rating: teen (for wounds)
Word Count: 5020
A/N: This is a story for the 2013 Dark Angel Reverse Bang.
Summary: During a lab accident Sue contains a powerful explosion and is wounded. The only thing that can save her life is undamaged genetic material from her multiversal twin.
There was the sound of yelling coming from the lab followed by the crash of equipment being destroyed.
Another woman might have called the police. Sue ran straight through the doors, a force shield appearing in front of her.
"Victor, what are you doing?" she shouted, trying to catch his attention. She needed him to stop killing Reed with his bolts of electricity.
It looked like Reed was melting, his face twisted in pain as he huddled on the floor in front of von Doom. There were burns covering his arms where he'd raised them to protect himself. He looked weak, unable to completely hold his shape.
"Ah, if it isn't the Jezebel, come to rescue her darling beau." Victor's voice was distorted behind the metal mask, sinister and nothing like the man she'd once dated. He really had become a monster.
"Please, just stop," she said. She looked around, trying to get a read on the situation in front of her.
Reed had been working on one of his experiments all week, prattling on excitedly about neutrinos and causal effects. There was machinery spread around, blasted apart by von Doom as he indulged one of his electricity shooting temper tantrums. The air was filling with choking black smoke that was sucked up toward the hole von Doom had ripped through the ceiling.
As she watched, von Doom--not Victor, not anymore--shot another bolt of electricity at Reed with a mad cackle.
Reed screamed, his body arching and his mouth opening wide. She could see blue sparks leaping amongst his back teeth as his silver caps melted.
Something snapped in Sue. That was her husband being tortured in front of her. That was Reed.
It felt like something powerful moved through her, an impossible force that she could only aim, not control. Not so much a force field anymore as a force spear that she sent through von Doom with all her strength behind it.
He screamed as he was flung up and backward to smash against the four inch thick reinforced window. There was a bright shatter of glass and he was thrown out to tumble toward the ground far below.
Sue grinned in fierce satisfaction even as she dropped to her knees, panting for breath. She was sweating and shaking and her bones felt almost liquid from exhaustion. She had used too much energy and would be suffering from a migraine within the hour, but that was all right. Everything was going to be all right.
"S-Sue," Reed's gasping voice caught her attention and she forced herself to her feet. He needed her.
"Reed, are you okay?" She knelt down next to him, trying to see what all damage had been done. His face looked like a bloody and shattered wreck, but from experience she knew that it couldn't be that bad. Once he got himself back under control he'd be able to reshape his mashed features and she was sure he would be all right. What worried her were the burns on his arms and splashed across his chest.
"The ... machine ..." he gasped out, his hand flopping sideways to point.
She turned to look and realized where that humming-buzzing sound she'd managed to ignore was coming from. Reed's machine was destroyed, but still on. The sound growing louder and louder as power was gathered with nowhere to go.
"How do I turn it off?" she asked, looking down at him.
He closed his eyes, a single tear trickling free. "Too late. It's too late. Run. Save yourself."
He wanted her to leave him here to die alone. "No," she gritted out, rising to her feet.
The sound was getting louder and louder, and now she could feel something pressing against her skin, a pressure building in the room. It felt like heat against her face, but it was pure energy. It was going to blow.
"I love you," she told Reed. She staggered a little as she started walking, but she had a purpose and refused to stop.
"No," he begged, but she just gave him a smile and kept going.
It felt natural to position herself in front of his machine and raise her hands with her palms turned out. Her shield was wavery and weak at first, but she was stubborn and it grew in force. And when the machine exploded, a bright flash that had her closing her eyes and turning her face away, she held it.
Her bones were melting. Her hair was burning away. Sweat and tears were streaming down her face and it felt like all the air had been sucked out of the room. But she held it.
And when the explosion sunk away and the danger was passed, contained by her will and her stubborn refusal to give up, she felt empty. She had done too much. She couldn't do anything more. She was dying and there was no stopping it. But at least she'd protected him, the only man she had ever really loved.
As she fell, the sound of Reed's voice followed her down.
"Sue!"
* * *
It was lightly misting rain as she stalked down the Seattle streets with her hands jammed into the pockets of her tan jacket, a baseball cap pulled low over her eyes. She'd been out and about scavenging supplies, nothing too outrageous, just whatever she could fit into her backpack.
It was getting harder and harder for her to go out in public. She was the face of Freak Nation and too many people were able to recognize her from the news, which made it nearly impossible for her to help with the supply runs.
She did what she could when the walls felt like they were closing in on her and she had to get out. She tried to pick up a little bit of something every time, not that she had much choice, not when their little city within a city was nowhere near self-sustaining.
They needed things from the outside world. Which was why the more baseline human X-models were the ones staging the raids and foraging for goods. There wasn't a whole lot of other choice; plus they were all trained for infiltration.
She sometimes wondered if she should find her life weird. Instead, it felt strangely comfortable, more so than anything since slipping out of Manticore. Working with a unit, running ops, knowing that she wasn't alone because her brothers and sisters had her back. It was like fitting back into an old skin. Some part of her seemed to relax and even with all the danger she felt like she was coming home.
All those years of running and hiding, thinking that home would be a place. But home was people, her people, her own kind. All of them depending on her to do the right thing and protect them.
Then there was Logan. And how weird was that?
He was a completely normal human, but she loved him with an intensity that scared her sometimes. Enough that she wondered if there might be a flaw in her design, because her clone-sister had been stupid in love with a normal guy too.
Max pursed her lips and jammied down the sidewalk a little faster. She had places to be, people to do, and a bunch of people depending on her to be the leader. It was stressful and frightening and there were some days when she seriously wondered what she was doing. But it was her life and they were her family.
She refused to fail them.
The fence was in view and she was about to climb the nearest building so she could swing over when there was a strange sound, so deep she felt it vibrating through her bones.
Instinct screamed at her and she immediately tried to twist out of the way, but whatever was happening must have been messing with her inner ear. Instead of a graceful jump-hip-twist, she staggered, her feet nearly going out from under her when the ground turned to thick syrup beneath her.
The air was suddenly heavy on her lungs so she held her breath, wondering if some unfamiliar poison gas had been released. That sound throbbed through her and she felt a sharp pain in her left ear followed by a trickling sensation.
There were distant shouts and she couldn't help a sense of pride in her family wanting to save her.
But it was already too late.
Like some kind of crazy sci-fi movie, the air thickened around her, keeping her from staggering free. There was a swirl of light and air and that deep throbbing sound was all around her, passing through her, swallowing her up until the world was a blur.
She fell to her knees, but the ground wasn't there. The sidewalk had become murky and black beneath her, a maw swallowing her whole.
She might have screamed, or maybe it was a bitten off curse. It was hard to tell when she was falling and falling, the air pressing solid around her in an organ squeezing embrace she could definitely do without.
Max squeezed her eyes shut against the sickening rush of color.
Whatever weapon was being used, she didn't think she was going to be waking to Section cops guarding her bedside. Things were gonna be serious.
She fought to stay conscious, but it was a losing battle.
She dropped out for a little while.
*
There was classical music playing and the pillowcase beneath her cheek was soft flannel. There was a warm, purring weight against her hip and she recognized the presence of a cat.
She didn't open her eyes or tense her muscles, didn't betray that she had regained consciousness at all. She just tried to gather as much passive intel as she could manage.
There was the murmur of distant voices and the sound of pans clanking against a stove top. She could only hear with her right ear, the one currently pressed against the pillow, but she tried her best to make out what was being said.
"... can't believe ... looks just like her."
"Are ... sure ... good idea? What ... thinking?"
"She ... Sue. I ... save her."
Max was concentrating so hard on hearing what they were saying she almost missed the sound of the door opening. She had to fight to remain perfectly still and not change her breathing.
Whoever was in the room smelled strange, like old copper pennies and crushed earth. There was none of the musk of a human or animal, and the heartbeat she strained to hear was slow and ponderous, lacking the liquid rush she was used to.
There was the sound of a metal tray being set down on the table next to the bed followed by a weary sigh. "I'm sorry, kid. I don't know what he was thinking dragging you into this, but he really loves her."
She forced herself not to tense as the gravel-voiced man moved close, but all he did was scoop up the cat and walk away. The thud of his footsteps was heavy on the floor, then there was the click of the door closing.
Cautiously, she opened her eyes without moving around. There were most likely cameras watching her and it wouldn't do to let anyone know she was awake until after she had made her escape.
She was in a comfortably furnished guest room--all pale caramel colored walls and cream carpet. There were art prints of sailing ships and trapped sunsets. It was like something from a pre-Pulse movie and not the prison cell she was expecting.
Max assessed her current state. She didn't hurt anywhere and she hadn't been chained to the bed. The only damage was her blown eardrum, and she was fairly sure that would fix itself in a few days. Advanced healing was good for something at least.
Whoever had street snatched her obviously had no experience dealing with a transgenic. Otherwise there would be thick bars on the window and the door would be made of something stronger than wood.
Silently, she slipped from the bed. Her clothes weren't anywhere in sight, but she'd made escapes in a lot less than a pair of blue cotton pajamas. She was a little wistful about her boots though. They were her favorites.
The more aggressive "fight now" part of her nature urged her to find out everything she could about her captors by beating the information out of them. But if there was one lesson she'd learned in the last few years, it was that curiosity was dangerous and it was better to attack from a position of strength.
She would escape, then find out who her enemies were and how many. Then maybe she'd come back later with some X5s and maybe Mole and his Nomlies. They'd been itching for a fight.
The tray her captor had brought contained a covered plate with toast, crispy bacon, fluffy eggs, and a banana. Her stomach rumbled at the sight of the food, but she wasn't going to trust that they weren't trying to drug her. She snatched the banana though, peeling it and eating it in small bites to make it last.
Quickly tossing the room, she wasn't too surprised to find that it was absent of anything really useful. The drawers were empty and she would have better luck using her fists as a weapon than the nail file she found.
She kept the nail file anyway, just in case.
The window opened easily, letting in the stench of city air. There was also a lot of honking and car engines and for a second she was stunned by all the noise.
Max climbed out the window and stood on the narrow ledge looking down. She was high above an active city, one that fairly blazed even in the daylight with electricity and casual wealth.
She wasn't in Seattle anymore, though where she was, was a mystery.
Great. I've been sold overseas or something. Some place in Europe considering the architecture and the English on the billboards.
Max ran along the ledge until she found the fire escape. Then it was an easy leap and grab before she was racing down rattly metal stairs.
She needed information on her enemies. But first she would find some clothes and shoes. Then she'd come back and teach those fools why transgenics weren't to be messed with.
*
Several hours later she was wandering around in a daze, wearing clothes she'd stolen from an unsuspecting woman. Mugging people wasn't something she enjoyed, but it had to be done if she wanted to fit into this weird situation.
She'd pinched herself several times, but she wasn't dreaming: She was in a different world. One where the Pulse had never happened and the United States was still chugging along as a world super power.
And there were people with actualsuperpowers running around. Or flying around, which she wasn't sure how to deal with. The very laws of nature had been warped and turned all crazy.
It felt like she'd stepped into a comic book or something. And all she wanted was to go home, back where the world was sane and there weren't a bunch of mutants running around.
Irony, thy name is Max Guevera, she thought.
Walking the streets of this city, which turned out to be New York, she couldn't help being dazzled by what she was seeing. So much wealth and luxury, the like of which she had never seen in her life.
She covertly eyed the people she passed on the street, and it was weird. They looked as though they had never faced any kind of hardship in their entire lives. They'd never had to fight for food or clean water, never been beaten by the Sector Police when they broke curfew. They were happy and healthy and they didn't have any of the wariness that she was used to seeing.
There were neon signs lit up on buildings and everything looked strangely clean. The Pulse hadn't happened here. This was a city that hadn't experienced the panic and defeat of losing all hope that things would ever get better.
Her attention was caught by a loud "CRASH-bang!" and the amplified sound of malevolent laughter. People were screaming and running in terror, and through the crowd she spotted a guy in a green bodysuit with a ridiculous yellow cape brushing the back of his knees. He had what looked like a big fishbowl on his head.
There were flickers of light shooting from the fingers of his gloves and she thought there might be the outline of shapes caught up in what he was doing. Nightmare images of screaming mouths, skulls, and shattered bodies staggering and falling as their skin was melted away. Then she blinked and it all faded to gray, her mind automatically translating the images as nothing more than lies and refusing to see them anymore.
She kept far to the side, pressing her back against a wall as she tried to remain as inconspicuous as possible. She didn't want to be involved in whatever was going on here and this guy was none of her business.
Then the guy grabbed a preteen girl by her ponytail and put his hand against the side of her head. "Give me what I want or I'll melt her brain with my nightmare visions!" he shouted.
The girl screamed and kicked her feet as he lifted her up by her hair, then she froze. The cords in her neck stood out sharply as she stiffened in his grasp, her mouth opening wide as her eyes stared at something only she could see. Urine trickled down her leg as she hung in the air.
A growl escaped Max's throat. There was no way she could just stand by and watch something like this happen.
Even though she didn't know what his suit was all about, her eyes were drawn to the thin tubes connecting his stupid fishbowl helmet with the back of his suit. They were obviously important.
Reaching into her pocket, she pulled out the nail file and flung it with enough force that the blunt edge ripped through the tubes. There was a hiss of escaping gases and the guy stumbled, dropping the girl in the process. She scrambled away and was snatched up by a frantic woman that had to be her mother and was hurriedly dragged down the street.
There was a bright flare of light and flame zipping out of the sky to become a man in a blue bodysuit with a circled "4" on the chest. He punched the fishbowl with a flame swathed fist and there was a shatter of glass to reveal a sweat-soaked man that gratefully gasped for breath while cursing viciously at the same time, struggling against the superhero holding him.
"Shut up, you're not getting away," the flame guy snarled. He lifted his head and somehow his eyes met Max's and widened in surprised. "Hey!"
Police cars skidded up on the scene and Max felt it was time for her to go. She slunk back the way she'd come, not fast enough to appear as though she was fleeing suspiciously, but fast enough that she was all the way down the block and crossing the street before the flame guy realized she'd left.
Then he chased after her, a flying burning man yelling, "Hold up there!" at her.
She ran.
There was always something so freeing about using her full speed, running faster than a normal human could even imagine. Running so fast that the world both blurred around her and slowed down, her muscles moving smoothly beneath her skin as she hit her pace and leapt to grab the ladder of a fire escape and threw herself upward in a careless overarm pull until she reached the top and flung herself onto the rooftop, not slowing down an instant.
Her stolen sneakers scraped across the flat top and she didn't hesitate to leap off the roof to the building next door and kept on running. Her breath came in measured pants as her legs kept pistoning her forward, jumping from building to building, climbing when she had to and never stopping.
Because he wasn't stopping.
She could see the ghost of his flames reflected in the windows as she passed by, zipping after her.
"Stop!" he yelled. "Stop, please, I'm not going to hurt you!"
She came to a skidding halt on top of a building and turned to look at him. She wasn't going to be able to lose him, so she figured facing him down was the only option. "Why are you chasing me?" she demanded, her breath coming only a little fast. "I didn't do anything."
He landed on the roof in front of her, the flames seeming to be sucked into his skin. "You ... You look just like my sister," he said, staring at her rudely.
"Well, I'm not her."
He shook his head. "No, you're not, but she's the reason why you're here."
Max frowned at him suspiciously. Who the hell was this guy anyway? "What do you mean?" she asked.
He held his hands palm out toward her as though to prove he wasn't holding any weapons, which didn't mean much considering he was some kind of pyrokinetic. "My name is Johnny Storm. Sue is my sister. Her husband Reed is the one that brought you here."
"Why?"
Johnny came closer, but not too close, standing in front of her with a beseeching look on his face. "Because Sue is dying."
"And what does that have to do with me?" she asked.
"You're her genetic twin," Johnny said. "We need you to save her life."
Max edged away. She'd been part of this story before, and it had ended with Zack shooting himself in the head after bequeathing his heart. "I'm not sure I like this."
Johnny gave a harsh laugh. "I don't like it either, but it wasn't like there was any other choice. I just wish Reed had given you the option of saying no."
"Or how about letting me know what was happening at all?" Max said dryly. "This isn't my world. I don't know how I got brought to this place, but this isn't my world. Why should I help anyone?"
"Please." There was so much pain in his expression. He looked at her as though she was the only hope he had. "Reed shouldn't have kidnapped you like that, but we were going to ask you for your help, I promise. We weren't just going to use you without giving you an option to say no."
"I don't understand anything that's going on here," she said, hating the sound of her own bewilderment. "How did I even get brought here?"
Johnny shook his head. "It's hard to explain. Reed is a scientist, doing all kinds of science things. He made a machine that can reach into alternate Earths just so he could find you. There's hundreds of thousands of other-Sue's out there, but you are the only one that can save her life."
She'd never be fond of scientists, no matter how far away she got from Manticore. "I'm not with the trusting here, so how about a little more detail? How did he find me? Why did it have to be me? What's wrong with his wife?"
"My sister Sue was hurt when one of Reed's experiments was damaged by a guy name Victor von Doom," Johnny said. "She managed to contain the explosion, but she received a dose of radiation that's melting her from the inside out. Reed got her into stasis, but she's dying in her sleep."
It sounded completely insane. There was no way any of this was real and she wondered if she wasn't in a lab somewhere having her brain scrambled by psy-ops. Maybe she'd never really escaped from Manticore that second time. Maybe she was locked in a lab with her personality being rewritten and Freak Nation had never happened. It had all seemed absurd, but she'd just been so happy to be free and to have her family around her and an enemy they could understand.
What if none of it had been real? What if everything she knew was nothing more than a construct to recreate her as a good little soldier, willing to give up her blood and her life when she was asked?
"This is ridiculous," she said. "There's no such thing as superpowers. Did you really think I would believe some guy could fly around on fire? None of this is real."
"It's very real," he said, "and my sister is dying and you're the only one that can help her."
"Why me?" she asked. "Don't try to snow me, just tell me. Why me?"
"Because even though there's countless Earths out there, you're the closest genetic match to my Sue. It's the whole having superpowers thing, you know. We were exposed to gamma radiation, it's what gave us our abilities, but it changed us way past the molecular level." Johnny shook his head. "I don't really understand it myself, but the four of us have been changed to the point that we're completely different than we were before, our genes twisted and warped."
Max raised a skeptical brow. "Yet somehow I'm supposed to match your sister?"
"Yes. You're the only one. Reed says he needs to give Sue some kind of an infusion of your DNA to be able to save her." Johnny didn't hesitate, going down to his knees in front of her, putting himself at her mercy. "Please help my sister. I can't watch her die."
Max crossed her arms and glared down at him. "You guys snatched me up and brought me here against my will. You could do anything you want with me. Why are you even bothering to ask, flame guy?"
"Because I'm not a monster," he said. "I want to save Sue, but that doesn't mean we get to do whatever we want to you. All I can do is ... I'm begging you. Please help my sister." There were tears in his eyes and a hint of defeat to the slump of his shoulders. He was so afraid that she would turn him away, that she would say "No" and let Sue die.
Max felt a wrenching sensation in her chest. She wasn't seeing Johnny anymore, she was seeing Zack. She was seeing her brother offer up his life to save her. Dying so that she could live.
"I guess it's my turn," she murmured.
He blinked. "What?"
She shook her head. "Nothing."
She turned away from him and walked to the edge of the building, staring out at this strange city. She clenched her hands on the low metal rail and leaned far forward. The wind rose up the side of the building, causing her loose hair to fly up around her head.
"What do you need from me to save Sue?" she asked. "It's not anything that will kill me or anything, right?"
There was the scuff of him rising to his feet behind her, then the crunch of his boots as he came next to her. He leaned his hip against the rail and she couldn't help noticing how easy it would be to shove him over. "Bone marrow. That's all we need. Just some of your bone marrow."
"And what happens to me once you get it?" she asked just to make sure.
"Nothing," he said. "Reed flips on his crazy multi-universe machine thing, you go through back to your world, and you're a hero for saving my sister's life."
"It's pretty crappy that you guys didn't ask me before bringing me here," she said.
He shrugged and tipped his face back to catch the sunlight. "Even though Reed loves Sue more than anyone else in the world, he's not too great with people. He snatched you up before any of us knew what he was going to do." He snorted. "Ben was pretty pissed off. He's not all that into the idea of people getting their rights violated."
"I'm not that into being the one violated either," she said.
"Well, considering you're the perfect match for my sister, I don't like the idea of you being violated. I mean, you're practically my sister here. That's weird."
Max couldn't resist a faint laugh. "I'll go with you. I'll give up some marrow and save your sister. And then you send my ass home and you don't let that Reed guy snatch up any other people without asking permission first."
He flashed a white toothed grin at her. "I promise."
And she believed him.
* * *
Waking up. It wasn't something she'd ever expected to do again.
The light hurt her eyes and her throat was painful and dry. Her body ached in that way she recognized from her first stay in Reed's stasis chamber, which looked more like a glass coffin than she was comfortable with. But she was alive.
And the first face she saw was Reed's looking down at her. There were shadows around his eyes and he hadn't shaved in several days, but she was glad to see that he wasn't hurt.
"You look terrible," she rasped, her lips quirking up at the corners.
He smiled through his tears in that way of his. "You look absolutely beautiful."
Then Johnny was standing next to him, grinning at her and his eyes looked damp. Then Ben was there, and she felt happy to have her family close even as exhaustion was drawing her back down into sleep, real sleep this time, not a medically induced coma and a stay in the stasis chamber.
As her eyes slipped shut, she thought she saw her own face looking at her, but that must have been some kind of hallucination. She'd ask Reed about it when she woke.
Because she was going to wake up and everything was going to be okay. She believed it this time.
=THE END=