Age of Apocalypse: Battles to Death

[x-eidolon.livejournal.com]

The battles continue…



Haller's instinct was correct - the construct, cubes within cubes within cubes, isometric astral projections of an n-dimensional hypercube - were not built to repel, but to contain. The external appearance of Pestilence hinted at both the jailer and the prisoner, but it was only upon entering the bright white room that those identities were confirmed.

The only permanent fixture in the room was just slightly away from the center of the space. It looked like a restraint chair of the sort used to immobilize prisoners for forced feeding, injections, or the like. But rather than metal and fabric, it was formed of a blend of flesh and circuitry.

Natalya Ignatova was the one restraining Doug Ramsey. Circuitry extended from her ankles to immobilize his feet, her hands gripped tightly around his wrists, and her face dominated the headpiece so that, no matter which way his head thrashed, her lips were always whispering in his ear.

On the far wall, a precisely arranged grid of photographs were plastered, 'SLAIN' or 'APPREHENDED' covering all but a very small number in lurid red print. And in front of that, in full view of the 'chair', was a high-resolution hologram, showing in real time the battle Pestilence was engaged in.

He'd heard something of Mastermold, though he'd never encountered her himself. A technopath -- or rather, one who could exert control over any system that utilized electrical currents. Including, it seemed, the human nervous system and brain.

But this was beyond simple control. This was an infiltration so profound this was the only place he could even perceive Doug's thought processes -- everything beyond was Ignatova, informed here and there by some fear or memory she had found and turned to her own purposes. It was as if the two entities were . . . integrated.

Almost. The telepath crossed the room to place himself directly between the captive and the grid. He saw, now, that Doug could not even close his eyes. Wire-like hair snaked from the headrest to lock his eyelids open.

The sight heartened him, because restraint meant resistance.

"Doug. Can you hear me?"

The same hair keeping his eyes open separated into strands, a wide one of which parted Doug's teeth and snaked between them, gagging him. His pried-open eyes darted wildly, and Ignatova's face shifted from whispering in Doug's ear to address Haller. "Error. Unauthorized access." There was a pause, where Ignatova clearly realized that too many defenses were offline providing energy to the regeneration process. "You do not belong here," she told the telepath sternly.

"Neither do you." Jim took a purposeful step forward. "And I wasn't talking to you."

A hand shot out -- not Jim's, but the larger, stronger hand of Jack -- and seized the tendril acting as a gag. Jim simply stood, arms at his sides, while the shadow of his alter pulled the obstruction from the man's throat inch by painstaking inch.

The tendril lashed in Jack's grip like a snake, but the arm never even trembled. The telepath himself only watched impassively. Once he was sure the younger man's airway was clear he returned his attention to the captive.

"Doug?"

Doug's mental 'voice' was hoarse, as it had been years since he had done anything with it but protest Mastermold's inch-by-inch takeover of his body and psyche to create Pestilence. "Are...are you real?" he asked finally.

"Yes." Another hand darted out to catch a second tentacle before it could restore the gag. Without any apparent attention from Jim, Jack's hands swiftly knotted them both into immobility.

"Do you know what's going on?" asked the telepath. "What's happening outside?"

"What do you think?" Doug asked with a toss of his head, all he could manage with Ignatova still restraining him. "It's all she ever shows me. In every evil detail. For -years-. Do I know what's going on," he muttered angrily to himself, then paused as a thought occurred to him.

"Can...can you kill me?"

Yes. His gut twisted to think of it, but yes. "Not unless I have to," Jim replied. "Either way it's not a choice you should make while a defunct Russian experiment whispers in your ear." He held his hands out, inches from Doug's barely mobile head. "Death we can revisit. Let's try freedom first."

"Freedom is a lie," the smooth, almost mechanical tones of Mastermold countered. "You can never be free of me. You will never be free. Accept this." Wires and circuitry extended from her form into Doug's, connecting through muscle and bone to touch nerve clusters in a grotesque analogy for the way she maintained control of his external form. The first machine Natalya Ignatova had ever controlled had been the human body, all those years ago - her own, then mechanically augmented others. And she had gotten quite adept at it.

"The fact you say that means he hasn't yet," Jim said. He closed his eyes. "So neither will I."

The space between the telepath's hands began to brighten with a light softer and more natural than the chamber's harsh fluorescence. The technopath's circuitry began to stir like metal in the presence of a magnetic field. Wires began to bulge from Doug's astral form, dragging skin and tissue with them.

A two-toned scream of pain - tenor and soprano - was the response to Haller's attempt to separate them. A decade or so of exposure had given Ignatova a long time to insinuate herself in every corner of Doug's brain and body. And every technological augmentation, every piece of him replaced to create the Horseman, had whittled away at Doug's ability to resist her. And if not for her desire to have him end the struggle himself by surrendering, she would have overcome him long before.

"He is mine," Ignatova hissed. "Body -and- mind. Whatever you wish to believe, we are one. It amuses me to toy with him. But we are a single entity, perfection of form and thought. The synthesis of thesis and antithesis, the inevitable triumph of the dialectic."

Memory fragments escaped with each spurt of blood and electrical pop. Doug falling across his console as an electrical surge shocked him briefly into unconsciousness. Ignatova fleeing her broken shell and imprinting onto a temporarily receptive biological substitute. Years of stolen seconds taken when the mind was at rest, each window extending through the accumulation of time and trauma. Windows in which the technopath could make contact -- and then, from that contact, improvements.

Blanks in Jim's borrowed memories began to fill. The younger man's sleepwalking; sleep disturbance they had believed to be a traumatic reaction to his torture in Genosha; increasingly common disappearances with no memory of the event, ending his time as an active operative before the day he disappeared one last time. So many signs. So many opportunities to prevent this . . . wasted.

The memories from this world's native self stirred referred emotions: something like anger that this had slipped by him, and guilt, too, in failing one of his father's students so profoundly. Just one more failure among too many. The urge to eliminate the Horseman rose, the knowledge of how he would do so rising with it.

And that thought, though only half-supposition based on memories not his own, was enough to give him pause.

With the care of a man afraid to rise from bed least he forget a dream, Jim lowered his hands.

"You are one, aren't you?" he said as Doug panted within Ignatova's rapidly stabilizing grasp. "Your imprint is threaded through every fiber of the augments. Scrubbing you from his mind wouldn't make a difference with you riddling his bone marrow."

"You grasp the truth, then," Ignatova replied, the barest trace of smugness in her mental voice. While cold, in this realm she was not entirely emotionless the way the external aspects of Pestilence tended to be.

"That's why...you need to...kill me..." the remnant of Doug Ramsey ground out desperately. The years of exposure to what his body had done hadn't left him pliant the way Ignatova had hoped.

They had made him suicidal.

"No. Not you." The telepath's eyes fell on Doug's immobilized hands. "Your body acts as an extension of your mind," he continued, half to Ignatova, half to himself. "Your mind is grounded in your body. They are one. They're the same. But at your core, you and he are not."

Without warning Jim's hands shot out, seizing the technopath by the hands still locked around Doug's wrists. No alters trailed the movement as the psi locked eyes with Doug -- and, through him, his tormentor.

"Natalya Ignatova, I can see you."

Neither Ingatova nor Doug was given a choice in the link. Jim could not even allow himself time to think. Blindly he drove forward, riding the instincts of the self Betsy had so pointedly reminded him he was not. The body remembered. Ignatova remembered. The very nature of the augmentations had necessitated an extensive map her host's physiology, while the powerful equipment Pestilence utilized for data-analysis refined that awareness to a genetic level. Jim seized the cold precision of Ignatova's knowledge and used it to supplement the physical, physiological memories that resided in Doug's subconscious. That he didn't understand the data didn't matter; Ignatova did, and she provided the blueprint whether she wanted to or not.

He began to scour the complex circuitry the technopath had so painstakingly threaded through her host, tracing the division between wire and vein, silicon and flesh. He began to grind it beneath his mind not one section at a time but all at once, every system, every point of infection. Simultaneously, he seized upon the regenerative malleability Apocalypse's own cells had imbued to facilitate a more perfect synthesis between technology and biology. With a twist of his mind, he now turned them against the Horseman. This is your template, the psi told the cells with a telekinetically enforced imperative, issued on a level so deep there was no way to determine between thought and deed.

Eliminate the artificial. Use the waste as fuel to rebuild the organic.

System restore.

Even as the cells complied he wondered: Was reality really so thin? When everything worked in concert, was this how easily the world could be changed?

It might fail. Doug could easily die of shock even if the physical exorcism succeeded, but the only alternative was death. Teetering on the cusp of revelation, Jim began to isolate the final piece of the puzzle: the grafts of Ignatova's own brain tissue. Behind his questing senses he readied a psionic strike, preparing the technopath's complete annihilation.

And then a solid wall of force hit him from behind.

_______



"No!" Wanda had just managed to crawl her way up from the hole in the middle of the street only to be in time to watch as an entire building buried Molly. Just like that and the teen was just -gone. Despite not knowing her for long, Wanda felt the surprising sting of tears before rage descended down upon her. The blinding rage drove back the pain and exhaustion and she used it to find her feet. Used it to dive towards Marius with the intent of bringing the full power of the Chthon tainted chaos power down on his head.

Until the ground gave way once more under her feet.

Famine glanced over his shoulder, the ridges over his deep-set eyes twitching in a manner that indicated that somewhere under there eyebrows were rising. "Gravity is not your ally today, is it?" he remarked, sounding mildly impressed. "I didn't even do that." He seemed to consider for a moment, then shrugged.

"Oh well. Waste not, want not."

A twitch of his wrist distorted the tangled threads beneath her, further loosening what had already begun to give way. Famine watched the woman vanished into the deepened sinkhole with an aborted yell. He declined to move closer, knowing that moving into her line of sight was an invitation to attack if she was in any position to use her powers, but a few moments observing the edge yielded no signs of reappearance.

The Horseman straightened from his crouch and gave his neck a crack. He very much doubted she was dead, but with luck she had sustained a few injuries in the way down. Regardless, his bones still ached with whatever strange feedback loop she'd incited. He needed a moment to recharge.

His amplified sensitivity to mutants allowed him to locate the basic vicinity where Molly had been buried with relative ease. A few strategic tugs on the threads of probability shifted or reduced the rubble that blocked him, and the combination of the kinetic energy he'd absorbed and manipulation of his hands into something more spade-like took care of the rest.

Eventually he found an arm and was able to yank the body free from beneath a particularly twisted piece of metal. Dead meat wasn't as satisfying, but it would do. Enhanced strength would be beneficial if Maximoff was still able to put up a fight; the less chance of overlapping their powers the better.

Once laid out the girl seemed even smaller than she had during the fight. It seemed impossible that she could have been mistaken for Riveter. He pondered sawing off a piece for Pestilence to analyze. It wasn't like the man to supply them with such inconsistent intelligence. Besides, relatively little tissue was needed for genetic analysis, and her longbones would last him a few meals. It might take some time, but Famine was sure he could find an edge and density keen enough to do the job.

First thing was first: it was time to feed. Palms twitching in anticipation, the Horseman reached for her neck.

As his hand nearly closed around the skin a small hand grabbed his wrist as Molly opened her eyes. A faint pop was heard as she yanked his shoulder out of its socket, then brought up both of her feet to kick him hard in the knees to get them to buckle. With her hand still clamped around his wrist it offset his center and she swung him over her head.

Climbing to her feet, she blearily tried to get her bearings and picked up her hat, putting it back on with her other hand with the other one still a hold of his wrist.

"You don't get to win. That's our job."

"Win?" Despite the unexpected pain Horseman actually laughed, the sound wet and rasping. He gestured to the broken city around them with his free hand. "What is there to win? Posture and make all the speeches you wish, but in the end your grand gestures amount to nothing. This is reality. You are scavengers picking the bones of a dead dream."

With his functioning arm Famine jerked the dislocated appendage closer, dragging Molly with it until she was so close their noses almost touched.

"I am the scavenger that shall pick yours."

Molly didn't flinch as stared down at him. He put a building on her but she was alive. She was unsquishable. He couldn't scare her; she wouldn't let him.

"You can try," she said, giving his arm a hard yank. "But David kicked Goliath's butt cause Goliath thought he was the best cause he was bigger. But that just meant he fell harder."

The painful gasp from her yank transformed into another laugh. "Now I know how young you are. I, too, was told that story. But in the real world, only the strong thrive. All the weak can hope is to survive." Famine smiled, the expression cold. "Until the strong have no more use for them."

With a wet pop Famine's dislocated shoulder realigned into its socket. His free hand shot toward her with rattlesnake speed.

His hand faltered mere inches from Molly as the ground beneath Famine's feet suddenly gave way. Red light had been seeping out of the ground behind him, turning the mud and cement into a fine dust that, between Wanda's frantic manipulation underground and the above ground fight, had finally disintegrated. Famine didn't fall far, a foot or maybe a little more but it was far enough to remove him from Molly's vicinity and put him close enough to Wanda's grasp.

She rose from the crouch she'd been in and launched herself at Famine. It was past time for words or taunts or anything else and Wanda knew she had to eliminate Marius now or their chances of walking away from this in one piece were going to be slim to none.

Wanda slammed against his back and wrapped her hands, strong from a lifetime of fighting and working, around his neck. Right before she slammed the entire weight of her power through them both, she caught Molly's eyes - wide with worry and stress - and thought 'Let this spare her'. And then the flesh beneath her hands began to melt and bubble as the chaos energy raced through them both.

The laws of physics shattered. Concrete liquified into sand while pockets of glass formed in asphalt. A length of metal piping rusted into nothingness while another burned white-hot and contorted like a maddened snake. Wanda's intense manipulations just barely managed to keep it from Molly, leaving herself and Famine to bear the full brunt of the chaos.

It was an assault the Horseman could neither absorb nor counter. Twisting with bone-shattering contortions in the virulent red light, Famine uttered one barely human scream and vanished.

The pain from the feedback loop was too much for even Wanda to bear and when Marius disappeared, she vaguely realized that she had been using his presence to prop herself up. With no support, she tipped forward and collapsed in the fine dust her powers had created of the earth and rock around her. The world dimmed around her and she didn't - couldn't - fight it.

Even though Molly knew she was unsquishable, all the things that happened when the red light spilled out told her that being hit by it was not a good idea. She was ducking and covering when Marius started yelling and disappeared.

Then Wanda fell over.

Quickly standing up, Molly glanced around. It'd gone quiet now. It almost felt, for a moment, like she and Wanda were the only ones left in the world.


_______




For the first moment in years, Doug Ramsey was in control of his own body. For the first time, he could see without the filter of Ignatova's input the world he had helped create.

A single overriding impulse went through him - end the torment.

The armblade - one of Ignatova's first hidden enhancements to Doug's body - sprang out of its sheath as his arm cocked back to aim the point at his temple. Fitting, to use one of her tools to free himself.
But as Haller was knocked free, every phage in the vicinity screeched in an unholy cacophony, the sound of a body at war with itself. Because the phages were an extension of Pestilence, and Ignatova was not defeated yet.

And war it was, as the missing Horseman made her entrance.

::Error. Abort, Retry, Fail? Process still running. Error. Error. Reboot. Error. System Restore. Error. System not shutting down correctly. Error. Restart in safe mode. Error.::

The armblade wavered as two conflicting commands raced through Pestilence's system.

Shut down.
Restart.
Shut down.
Restart.
Shut down.

Angelo had been standing tensely watching Haller work - nearby, but luckily at enough distance to avoid the worst of the explosion. He picked himself up, stunned and coughing on the smoke that thickened the air, and after a brief look around, ran to his teammate's side.

Haller was out for the count. And Angelo was alone, with Pestilence visibly regaining control.

Almost unnoticed through the smoke, a figure appeared.

The sound would have announced it before sight had, and as the machine neared, the low rumble like continuous track, despite the fact that it rode at least eight inches in the air, broke through the high pitched wails. It was a dirty thing, metal stained with pocks and dark brown, and a red winged horse painted on the side. It was named, but the letters were long worn away, the only letters left, IND, at the end.

Oh, this was just getting better and better. Angelo turned to face the new arrival, not holding out much hope even for a neutral party, let alone somebody on his side - and that faint hope vanished immediately when he saw her face, and knew her.

She pulled to a stop, the tail of her hoverbike swinging around to kick up a cloud of dust, where clearly no dust had been before, and dismounted cleanly. A quiet, slightly out of tune humming of "Flight of the Valkyries" came through, just barely underneath, as her engine cut out without it's lady.

"Seppuku," she said, grabbing Pestilence, Doug's, wrist with a searing grip. There was a short moment of ticking, an explosion, and the sword, forearm still attached, blew several meters away. Leaning down, she stared him hard in the face, eyes going blue a moment as she tore down her arm, her own hand reappearing, before returning to red. "I don't know who lied to you, but there is no honor in War."

"Don't care...about honor..." Doug grated out. "Just..." His voice cut off into a mechanical shriek, like that of a fax or modem connecting. When it ended, the expression on his face had changed.

"Pestilence...online. Rebooting."

Moving with robotic stiffness, Pestilence walked himself over to War's cycle and assumed a seat. His colleague did the same, positioning herself before him with businesslike efficiency. Her gaze fell briefly on Angelo and Haller as she did, and her expression registered nothing more than the acknowledgement of one regarding a pair of ants not even worth the effort of crushing.

Eyes flashing red, the fourth Horseman kicked off the ground and sped away.

Angelo let out a breath of something that wasn't quite relief, because they were hardly safe, but was close, and turned back to his teammate.

"Come on, Legion", he muttered - to himself, since Haller was in no condition to hear him. "Time to run."

__________



The exclamations from below were almost worth recording, if Death had been inclined to record her enemies humiliation. Which she was, though more for reasons of analysis than gloating. Gloating seemed unnecessary in most cases. She let the illusion of concrete and steel fade, and stepped into the bright sun for a moment to let it warm her - her own safety was of primary importance, but standing inside one of her images was cold, and blocked communications to the other Horsemen. "Reporting in. Gambit and Cannonball are distracted, pushing exhaustion. Waiting for the kill order." Largely a formality, but on the off chance that interrogations were warranted, it was practical to check in.

Instead of a reply, Death was greeted with the foul stench of Famine's teleportation. Her fellow Horseman spilled onto the rooftop behind her, wheezing and jerking as if shocked at regular intervals. Here and there a spurt of crimson energy flared.

"Strike that." Death said, calmly, and waited for Famine to complete another cycle of breath - inhale, exhale, spasm painfully, before bending to reach for his shoulder. "I thought you said the mercenary would be easy." She said. "Reinforcements, or just too much to bite off at once?"

"Maximoff -- got herself into something nasty--" Famine doubled over as his own lungs fought to maintain the configuration necessary to process oxygen. Chaos energy crackled again, and the skeletal ridges of his battle form abruptly bulged with razor-edges.

The huff of frustration was audible, and blew out the folds of Death's hood. "Can you pull yourself together, or do you need emergency stability? Please tell me you are carrying some, because I am not donating." Not ever, not even once. "Mine were... confusing. Tactics changes." She said, waiting for Famine to pull himself together - or answer her question. "LeBeau took my presence personally."

"There are many" Famine wheezed again, and his skin briefly melted from hard edges to leathery wrinkles and back again "inconsistencies. The girl . . . too young to be the mercenary. And something is wrong with Maximoff. Her power is fouled." He turned his yellow eyes on her, his skin still crawling. "Reassessment . . . may be necessary."

A whistle, the sound of a bomb dropping, and War appeared, dropping Pestilence to the ground in a heap. "Did we do role call already? I was busy saving this one's pathetic ass."

"If anyone says that now we are four, I will vomit." Death tilted her head, and pulled an image of the walls of the building they were standing on up another story. Lanterns sprouted at her feet, yellow and orange, to light their newly hidden sanctuary. "There, now we have some time to plan."

"Your intelligence left something to be desired, Pestilence," Famine hissed at the armored figure.
Much of Pestilence's energy was still devoted to regenerating his body from the physical and psychic attack he had undergone, but he had enough energy to quietly respond to Famine's barbs. "Multiple errors...noted in appearance of designate X-Men. Data...never faulty. Data is. Analysis faulty."

Famine bared his teeth. "'Faulty analysis.' I would extract restitution if there was enough human left in you to provide a meal."

"You do not want Pestilence's powers." Death said. "Either set." She pushed back her hood and gestured at Pestilence. "Pull up your recordings. I want to see where your strategies fell apart. War and I can reassess."

"You can go make us a sandwich," War breathed at Famine, all teeth. "Let the women work."