X-Men: Dark Mirror

by Marjorie M. Liu

  Until now. Kurt still smiled—even as he and Scott and Jean prepared to enter the most crowded part of the institute—but it was a struggle, a cheer he had to force upon himself in order to stave off despair.

  Kurt missed himself. He had, since awakening in this place, fought a continuous battle against his instincts, those basic primal desires to use what came so naturally: teleportation, agility; his tail, even. He missed those parts of him, felt the ache of their loss, and though he was a man who did not dwell on things that could not be changed, this struck him at the core of his heart.

  He thought he knew who he was without his gifts. Maybe. He hoped the others had a stronger sense of their identities. Ahead of them lay a hard road; he could not imagine what would happen if they found themselves incapable of separating personality from power, if they lost their resolve simply because the easy way was not open to them.

  You worry too much. The X-Men have suffered and endured worse than this, and have survived. You do not need to fear for them. Or yourself.

  Except, he could not shake the feeling that this was different, the loss so deeply personal, so sharp, that the cut would go deeper than any bullet or knife, go deeper than anything they had yet encountered.

  Or maybe he was just being dramatic. He got like that, sometimes.

  "Are you ready?" Scott asked. The three X-Men stood inside a tiny broom closet filled with cleaning supplies that Suzy assured them were never used in the early evening hours. The janitor, according to her, went home early—and the nurses did not like to clean. The closet was located beneath the stairs and was within hearing distance of the recreation room. Even now, Kurt heard the loud scrape of pushed-back chairs, the heated rumble of voices.

  "Are you sure you trust her?" jean asked. "She seems unbalanced."

  "Yes," Scott agreed, "but right now we need all the help we can get."

  "And you really think I can just . . . slip past those nurses and security guards in there?" Jean pointed at herself. "In case you hadn't noticed, I'm not the woman I used to be."

  "We need to rescue Logan and Rogue. I could leave you here and go retrieve them, but you would still have to cross the recreation room in order to access our best escape route."

  Jean sighed. "Better to get it over with now. I just wish ..."

  She did not finish telling them what she wished, but Kurt thought he knew. Jean wished she had her body back. Kurt had a similar wish for himself. Living as a mutant—with all the powers granted him—was easier than existing as a human.

  You have become so very spoiled by the incredible things you can do. Your only saving grace is that you have not known any other kind of life.

  Kurt heard a commotion out in the hall; a man screaming obscenities, howling like his heart was being torn from his chest. Something large crashed; a table, perhaps. Or a body.

  "It's time," Scott said. He cracked open the closet door and peered into the hall, then slipped out, gesturing for Kurt and Jean to follow. They did, and followed the sounds of chaos until they reached the recreation room. Not one person paid attention to them. Everyone — nurses, security guards, patients—stared at the scrawny young man writhing on the floor, contorting so wildly, with such abandon, that Kurt feared he would break his spine in half. From his mouth poured sounds of horror. Kurt wanted to clap his hands over his ears. Suzy had promised a distraction; her friend Kyle was certainly giving one.

  Scott grabbed Jean's hand and tugged her across the room, pushing through the thin crowds of patients who stood in their way. Kurt ran after them. Not one paid attention to their passage; the nurses surged toward the young man, shouting orders to one another as they grabbed his heaving body and struggled to hold him down. Kurt glimpsed Suzy; she winked at him and followed.

  Past the recreation room the halls were almost empty of people, though several security guards raced past as Scott, Jean, and Kurt reached the stairs. No one looked twice; the three of them could not compete with screams that sounded like murder.

  They ran up the stairs and at the top saw a nurses' station encased in glass. A woman sat inside, playing with the end of her braid, and when she saw the three X-Men she stiffened. Kurt approached first, but before he could say anything he felt a hand on his shoulder, a push, and Suzy slid past him. She placed her palms on the glass and stared at the nurse. Simply stared, and the woman went very still, her gaze open and glassy. Suzy said, "Go to sleep," and the nurse closed her eyes. Her face went slack.

  Kurt heard voices, sounds of movement on the stairs. Suzy said nothing, simply ran off in that direction without a backward glance.

  "I found them," Scott said, gesturing at the door nearest the office. The stolen keys rattled in his hand. Kurt pushed past and peered through the observation window. He saw Rogue, and beside her a small plump golden-haired woman who looked like the idyllic American country sweetheart. And then she gave him a nasty smile and it was all Logan.

  Scott unlocked the door. Logan and Rogue were already on their feet and Kurt and Jean quickly freed them from their restraints.

  "Are you both okay?" Scott asked, glancing out into hall.

  "Peachy," Logan said. "Is that you, Jeannie?"

  "No," said Jean, standing behind him. "That would be me."

  Logan turned and stared. "Whoa. I wish I could have been there for that first meeting."

  Jean narrowed her eyes. Logan held up his hands and backed off.

  "Come on," Scott said, holding open the door. "We need to get out of here."

  "You got a plan?" Logan asked. He rubbed his knuckles—a familiar gesture, one that pained Kurt to watch. Logan, like the rest of them, relied on his mutant gifts as a natural extension of flesh: arms, eyes, legs. Metal claws.

  "I'll tell you after we start moving." Scott entered the hall. Kurt followed close behind; his heart jumped when he saw a shadow in the stairwell, but it was only Suzy.

  "You're moving too slow," she said, as dappled green and gold whirled lazy pinwheels around her pupils.

  "Are you sure you can't get us past the front doors?" Scott asked.

  "Hell, no, little red. My eyes can only work their magic on one person at a time, and the hospital's got multiple watchdogs on each exit. Unless you want to fight your way out, the back way is best"

  "I could use a good fight," Logan muttered.

  Scott led them down the long corridor to a set of locked steel doors. The metal showed off dents, chipped paint; the hinges were rusty. Scott abandoned the keys and took out his lock pick.

  "What is this supposed to be?" Logan asked, glancing over his shoulder. Kurt followed his gaze. At the very opposite end of the hall he saw some of the facility's patients watching them.

  "This wing of the hospital is almost seventy years old. According to the blueprints, there's a set of old service stairs behind this door. They lead down to the original laundry room."

  "Ah, the laundry room," Logan said, as the doors clicked open. "You can always count on a laundry room for a great escape."

  The stairwell was unlit and smelled like wet concrete and mold. Jean and Logan entered the darkness; Kurt began to follow them until he realized that Rogue, Scott, and Suzy were standing quite still, staring at each other.

  "This is as far as I go," Suzy said. "I'll watch the doors, cause a ruckus if anyone tries to go down for a spot check."

  "Why are you doing this?" Scott asked. "And why haven't you already escaped? No matter what you say, I know you could leave here any time you want."

  Suzy glanced sideways at Rogue. A small smile touched her lips. "I stay here because I should. Everyone has their proper place. You should understand. These bodies aren't yours, after all. Just dreams and illusions."

  A card appeared in her hand: a battered nine of spades. Suzy gave it to Rogue, who held it gingerly between two fingers.

  "I'm crazy," Suzy said. "But Jane is crazier. I miss that."

  "Maybe you'll get her back," Rogue said quietly.

  "No," Suzy said. "She's gon
e. But at least now I don't have to look at a stranger wearing her face."

  Kurt, Scott, and Rogue entered the stairwell. Suzy, still smiling, closed the doors after them.

  He went blind in the darkness and pressed his back against the wall. Careful, they made their way down the stairs one tiny step at a time. Kurt brushed up against a soft arm.

  "Hey," Logan said. "Jeannie and I waited for you."

  'Thank you," Kurt said. "But please, ladies first."

  "Funny."

  "Do you hear anything ahead of us?" Scott whispered.

  "No," Jean said. "How long do you think it will take them to find out we're missing?"

  Logan snorted. "More than the five minutes we've been gone. These aren't exactly agents of SHIELD we're dealing with here."

  "Maybe not, but they hog-tied you just fine, now didn't they, sugah?"

  The stairs curved, but at the bottom they found a door. A thin line of light cut the air below it and they carefully watched for any flicker, any distortion that would signify movement on the other side. Nothing changed. Logan got down on his hands and knees and after a moment patted Kurt's ankle.

  The door was not locked from the inside. Holding his breath, Kurt carefully opened it. He saw a bare wall, with thick pipes hanging from the ceiling. The room was empty except for canvas sacks heaped in a pile on the floor. Large metal push bins lined the far wall beneath a small dingy window, where the only view was the underground portion of a cement holding wall. The weak light of dusk trickled through the glass.

  The room had no door, only a narrow hall that led deep into shadow. Logan followed it until he disappeared from sight; he returned less than a minute later and said, "This place is a maze. About twenty yards out I started to hear machines running, maybe even people talking. Is all of this locked off or do we have to worry about wanderers?"

  Scott shrugged. "It should be locked, but I can't say for certain."

  "Someone may check this area after they find out we're gone. It would be stupid not to."

  Jean peered into the darkness. "Did you see places to hide beyond this room?"

  Kurt saw Scott glance at Jean, and then look quickly away. Too quickly, it seemed. Kurt thought she noticed, and it hurt him to see that flicker of uncertainty pass through her eyes.

  "Some crawl spaces that'll get mouse droppings up your nose. They don't go back very far, so a flashlight would be enough to catch us."

  "Then let's get out of here before anyone comes looking." Scott peered up at the window. Kurt followed his gaze and studied the late evening sky.

  "Mein freund, if you wait only fifteen minutes, it will be full dark."

  "We're sitting ducks," Rogue said. "Though I prefer my chances when it's not still light out."

  "But they'll have tightened security by then," Logan said. "Assuming, of course, that anyone notices we're gone."

  "Security is heaviest inside the building. They've got double entry checkpoints, metal detectors, and all the windows but these are covered in wire. It's not easy getting out of here, at least for a regular person. I don't think the hospital will spend much man power looking for us outside the building. At least, not initially. By the time they do, we should be far and away from here. The Blackbird is parked only ten minutes away."

  Assuming it was still in the overgrown playing field where they had left it.

  "You're forgetting the fence," Rogue reminded him. "I've seen the barbed wire."

  "Suzy said there's a place where the chain link is loose."

  "Suzy," Logan said. "That's the woman who helped us?"

  "A mutant," Scott said. "And listen, Logan, I think we were fed false information to lead us here. This place was a trap."

  "You don't say." Logan crouched against the wall, resting his hands on his knees. "Problem is, I trust my source,

  Cyke, and he promised me some illegal antimutant activity. Besides, a body-snatching trap? Wouldn't there be easier ways to take us down, other than drag us all the way out here on some false lead? Especially for the person strong enough to do this?" He pointed at his breasts.

  "I don't have all the answers, Logan, but this," and he pointed at his own breasts, "is an indication that something went horribly wrong when we came here, and I don't think it was an accident. The one thing all of our new bodies have in common is that they shared the same doctor, a man named Jonas Maguire. He took quite an interest in us."

  "And the false imprisonment of mutants?" Jean asked.

  "I haven't seen anything to support that," Scott said. "The one mutant we have met seems to believe she should be here, and I don't think anyone is compelling her to feel that way. I don't think anyone could."

  "I agree." Rogue shook her head. "Suzy is crazy."

  "Crazy enough to know we were impostors," Scott said. "And crazy enough to help us."

  "I trust my source," Logan said again. "Besides, you seem to be implying that this Maguire had something to do with our situation. I'll buy that. He might be a mutant, or he could have orchestrated hiring one to gun us out of our bodies. But, how could some doctor arrange to set up the kinds of rumors that got us out here in the first place?"

  "He didn't have to make up the general stuff," Rogue said. "We did find pockets of mutant and human tension inside the city."

  "And he's a doctor. All he has to do is talk long enough, and someone will eventually spread the story."

  "I still don't like it," Logan said.

  "You never like anything," Scott said. "And right now, I'm less concerned with details. We need to get out of here."

  "Stage one of that plan has been completed," Kurt said. "Now we must make a run for it."

  Not something he looked forward to, but at the moment, it was all they could do. Stuck inside the bodies of strangers, without any real rights or resources ...

  Kurt sighed, wondering once again if he had gone soft. So many in the world, mutant and human alike, suffered indignities at the hands of others. His situation was no worse, and at least he had friends with him. At least he still knew who he was, even if the flesh was different.

  It was a very small comfort.

  7

  Fifteen minutes until full dark. They decided to wait Logan, unable to sit still, immediately crept back up the stairs to listen at the second-floor door. He did not hear anything. Did not smell anything. He had no idea if that mutant woman had kept her promise and still watched this door. He felt like someone had plugged up his nose and ears, and while he missed his claws—that fine ability to slice and dice—it was those two lost senses that bothered him the most.

  Ain't no use moping over things you can't change. Just be glad you're still alive and make the best of it

  Because the alternative meant a long slow rot in this godforsaken hole and he would rather die trying to escape than stay here one more minute. The hospital stirred up memories, what few he had, and none of them were pleasant.

  He did not hear an alarm, but as he stood with his ear pressed to the door and pretended he was still a whole man—without breasts—he heard the distant slam of a door and the sound of running. A muffled shout, more pounding feet, bangs and thumps—a very loud "damn"— and then, finally, a shuffling noise just beyond his door and the sense that, yes, someone had been standing there all along. Logan wished he had something to make a barricade with. His thick skull would probably do the trick.

  He crept back down the stairs. The old laundry room was so dark by this time he had trouble seeing. He ran into a tall solid body and said, "Jeannie?"

  "Yes, Logan." Her voice was quiet, solemn. The others were gathered below the window. Scott had his fist wrapped in one of the canvas sacks.

  "Game's up," he told her, and everyone stopped and looked at him.

  "They've begun looking for us?" Scott asked.

  "Yup."

  "Lovely," Jean said.

  Logan frowned and gestured at the window. "You going to fit through there, darlin'?"

  "I'll make it. It's better tha
n staying here."

  "Yeah," he said, wondering what her new body smelled like. "How do you like being a man?"

  "I'm discovering that it's the same as being a woman, except for certain anatomical differences."

  "You'll have to get Scott to educate you on the finer points."

  "I suppose," she said, but her voice was dull. Logan fumbled in the dark for her hand. Her new skin was rough, the touch masculine, but he forced himself to think of the woman inside and found it was not so difficult

  "Hey," he said. "Any tips for me?"

  That brought a moment of soft laughter. "Have you tried going to the bathroom yet?"

  "No."

  "Ask me that question after you do." She stepped toward the others and Logan was forced to let go of her hand. He watched Jean touch Scott's slender shoulder— the blackmail opportunity of a lifetime—and she said, "Let me break the window."

  "No," Scott said. Logan grinned. The X-Men's team leader barely cleared five feet and his hands were small and delicate.

  "Go on, Cyke," he said. "Be the woman in the relationship."

  Rogue coughed. Jean shot him a venomous glare. "You don't have a healing factor, mister. Watch what you say."

  "Sure thing," he said.

  "Jean," Scott began, but she blew out her breath and snatched a sheet of canvas from the floor. Wrapping up her hand, she pushed Scott out of the way with a not-so- gentle nudge and slammed her fist through the glass. Logan bit back another smile. He loved a woman who knew how to use her hands.