X-Mans Paat Nighn: Bomboclat!

by D D

When Monsta is trapped in a bunker by a cruel mastermind, X-Mans must fight to rescue him before his traumatic past destroys him. Rougie finds a mutant camp.

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X-Mans Paat Nighn (Part 9) The bathroom door had been locked for nineteen minutes, and Stormisha had started taking it personally. “Whoever in there better be giving birth.” “I'm in the kitchen,” Jeanetta called. Reen stood behind Stormisha with a towel over his shoulder and a coffee mug that smelled nothing like coffee. He knocked once. “Cyrus. Your face was clean when you went in.” “I'm adjusting my visor.” “Adjust it in the living room. We all seen you.” The ridge house carried every voice through its thin walls. Upstairs, somebody's borrowed alarm clock kept ringing in an empty bedroom. Downstairs, Scambit lay on a medical cot with his wounded leg elevated, listening to the argument and staring at the chair beside him. Rougie's sweater was gone from its back. He had noticed before sunrise. At first, he figured she was washing up. Then he figured she was helping with breakfast. Now the smell of burned toast had reached his room, and nobody had brought him a plate. “Where Rougie at?” he called. “Probably somewhere enjoying not hearing you,” Stormisha said. Scambit reached for the crutch beside his bed. The movement pulled at the dressing on his thigh, making him stop and breathe through his teeth. “I'm serious.” In the kitchen, Monsta set a small radio beside Professor Z's cup. His broad back was stiff beneath a borrowed shirt that would not button across his chest. The doctor had ordered rest. Monsta had interpreted that as permission to sit down while working. Misty's directions lay open on the table. Beside them, he had drawn the concealed bunker hatch and the narrow service road through the woods. “Di outside camera still sending a signal,” he told Z. “Somebody keeping di place powered.” Z studied the screen. The image showed wet leaves and an uneven patch of grass. Beneath the grass and mud was the trapdoor Misty had described. Stairs led down into the same underground bunker where she had hidden. “Can you copy its records without going inside?” “If di exterior connection working, yes.” Z looked at the way Monsta was holding his side. “A survey only. Take the service van. Check in every ten minutes, and if anything looks occupied, come back.” “Mi going to plug in a cable, Z. Not wrestle di building.” “Yesterday you wrestled a ceiling.” “And di ceiling cheated.” Z handed him the keys, still uneasy. With injured people in both downstairs rooms and Jeanetta flinching whenever a cupboard rattled, he needed to know whether the next attack was already being planned. Monsta took his equipment and eased himself through the back door. Scambit's crutch struck the hallway floor. “Has anybody actually seen her?” This time, everyone heard the difference in his voice. Cyrus opened the bathroom door. Stormisha forgot to push past him. Reen lowered his mug. Nightwalka checked the upstairs rooms while Z called Rougie's name through the house. There was no answer. Her boots were missing. So was her jacket. On the kitchen counter, tucked beneath a chipped bowl, Jeanetta found a folded sheet torn from a prescription pad. She read it twice before handing it to Z. The children are real. I remember where they took them. I couldn't sleep knowing they were still there. Don't send anybody hurt after me. Below that, in smaller writing: Tell Scambit to leave that bandage alone. Scambit looked down at his hand, which had been picking at the tape. Nobody made a joke. * * * Four hours earlier, Rougie had been certain she was about to break both ankles. She had left the ridge house while everyone slept, carrying cash, a bottle of water, and the scraps of memory she could no longer pretend were dreams. Children behind wire. A concrete washroom. A young man staring at her through a pane of reinforced glass, something strapped across his mouth. During the mansion attack, the hunter she had touched had brought those images back with details attached: a road number, a water tower, a morning transfer. She had taken a night bus as far as the driver would go. The rest was fields and service roads beyond the city. When headlights swept across an embankment, she climbed a fence to get out of sight. The top rail snapped. She fell backward, threw out her hands, and stopped. Her boots hung a foot above the mud. For a moment she refused to look down. Then she did, kicked at the empty air, and rose another three feet. “Hold the fuck up.” The headlights passed. Rougie drifted sideways into a bush. She grabbed a branch, pulled herself upright, and stared at her feet again. She had carried other people's strength, memories, pieces of things she could not always name. Whatever had left this in her had apparently neglected to include instructions. She let go. This time she stayed upright. “I been paying bus fare.” A laugh escaped her, startled and almost angry. She leaned forward experimentally. The ground moved beneath her. Leaning harder sent her over the fence so fast she nearly clipped a utility pole. It took three ugly landings and one lost water bottle to learn how to slow down. By dawn, she was above the trees. Then she saw the camp. It spread across a former industrial property, far larger than anything in her visions. Double fences enclosed long barracks, exercise cages, and a paved yard divided by painted lines. Watchtowers stood at the corners. The open eye crossed by a blade appeared on trucks parked beside a processing building. Children waited outside in the cold. Some were so small that the numbered clothes hung below their wrists. Older teenagers stood around them, blocking the wind with their bodies. Gray-armored guards walked the lines carrying rifles with transparent barrels. A boy whose hands glowed faintly was made to kneel until the light went out. Rougie settled behind the roof of an abandoned warehouse beyond the fence. She had known there were prisoners. She had not understood how many. A little girl in the nearest line lifted a hand toward a passing truck. A teenager gently pushed it down before a guard noticed. Rougie's stomach tightened. She could fly home. Tell Z. Bring help. Then the loading doors opened, and a guard began calling numbers for a transfer. She recognized the young man from the glass room. Two soldiers brought him across the yard with his wrists secured and a molded gray mask strapped over his mouth. He walked carefully, placing himself between the smaller prisoners and the guards. Even his shapeless uniform had been worked into something deliberate: sleeves folded evenly, collar turned, waist pulled in with a strip of braided cloth. He looked up as he passed beneath her hiding place. For a second, she saw the face from her vision clearly. Sharp eyes. Fine cheekbones. A small scar beside one eyebrow. He was the prettiest man she ever seen. Then a guard shoved him, and Rougie stopped thinking about his face. * * * Monsta's first check-in came on time. “No movement outside,” he said over the radio. “Mi checking di service box.” Z sat near the kitchen window with Rougie's note in his lap. Scambit had demanded the van, then a car, then somebody willing to steal a car. Reen had finally pushed a chair beneath him before he fell over. “You get one working leg before you start planning a getaway,” Reen told him. “She out there by herself.” “I heard you.” That answer was quieter than Scambit expected. Z reached for Rougie, searching past the nearby minds, the neighbors waking, the road crews already gathering near the ruined mansion. Distance thinned everything. He caught only a brief sensation of cold air and fear before it slipped away. She was alive. Farther away than he had hoped. He opened his eyes as Monsta's voice returned. “Outside terminal dead. Mi found di hatch under di grass. Stairs going down. There's a live terminal at di bottom.” Z pressed the radio button. “Monsta, wait.” At the bunker, Monsta had brushed mud from a recessed handle and lifted the heavy, grass-covered trapdoor. He descended the narrow stairs carefully, keeping one hand against the damp concrete wall. At the bottom, beyond an open security door, rows of prisoner photographs moved across a screen. One showed a child with pale light shining through her fingers. He stepped forward before he finished deciding to. The security door shut behind him. Far above, the trapdoor dropped into its frame, cutting off the rectangle of daylight at the top of the stairs. It did not slam. Thick bolts engaged in sequence, each one making a heavy, final sound. Monsta pulled the handle. Nothing moved. He braced a hand against the frame and leaned into it. Pain bit through his injured back. “Z. Di door just lock.” His radio hissed. “Z?” Every screen went black. Then a face filled them all. Blue-gray skin. Dark markings sweeping down from a heavy brow. A broad, armored collar that caught the light when the figure leaned forward. And lipstick, a rich plum shade applied with such precision that Monsta noticed it before he could stop himself. “You have been difficult to invite,” the man said. Monsta kept one hand on the door. “Mi don't remember receiving one.” “Your curiosity was sufficient.” The figure studied him through the camera. Behind him stood equipment Monsta could not identify and a row of tall, dark glass chambers. “Misty spoke of a man hiding behind screens,” Monsta said. “You finally find di light switch?” “My name is Apocalypto.” Monsta blinked once. The man waited, apparently accustomed to being allowed a moment after saying it. “All right,” Monsta said. “Open di door, Apocalicious.” “You are in no position to give instructions.” A panel slid aside near the floor. Silver vapor curled into the room. Monsta grabbed the steel worktable and drove it into the exit. The impact jarred his shoulders. The frame held. He tried again, felt something tear hotly beneath his bandages, and dropped to one knee. From inside the walls came the rising whine of sonic emitters. “Bomboclaaat!” Cold as hell, the bunker. On the screens, Apocalypto did not smile. “Now,” he said, “we can discuss the child.” * * * Rougie came down behind the processing building and immediately discovered that landing quietly was harder than landing alive. Her boot struck an empty bucket. She caught it before it hit the ground, held her breath, and waited beneath a narrow window while two guards passed on the other side of the wall. One complained about the transfer schedule. The other told him the special selections belonged to their equipment supplier and were none of his business. Their footsteps faded. Rougie eased the window upward and pulled herself through. The young man sat alone on a bench, chained to a floor ring. Through the glass in the opposite wall, she could see children waiting in another room. He jerked upright when she dropped inside. “Shh. I ain't with them.” His eyes traveled over her jacket, her boots, and the leaves caught in her hair. One eyebrow lifted. “I had a rough landing,” she whispered. He looked pointedly at the mask. “Right.” The lock was at the back, recessed beneath a metal cover. Rougie pulled the cover loose, then carefully separated the fastening with both hands. The alloy bent. He flinched when it scraped his cheek, but she caught the mask before it fell. He took a long breath through his open mouth. “Baby, if you came to kill me, let me moisturize first.” She almost laughed. Almost. “I came to get you out. What's your name?” “My name is Devantray Drake Bobby. But everybody call me Ice Tray.” “All that on your birth certificate?” “My mama had options and refused to choose. Who are you?” “Rougie.” “Well, Rougie, you got about ninety seconds before the man with the keys comes back.” She gripped his chain. Before she could pull, he leaned down and pursed his lips. A thin white stream spilled from his mouth. Frost spread over the links, thickening until the metal gave a brittle crack. He straightened, caught his breath, and snapped the chain against the bench. Rougie stared. “You do all that with your mouth?” “Girl, focus.” She glanced away, smiling despite herself. He noticed. “You always stare this hard during a rescue?” “I was checking if you hurt.” “My injuries ain't in my cheekbones, baby. Look through that glass.” The smile left her face. “How many?” “In this room? Twelve. In the camp? I stopped getting a reliable count.” He rubbed the raw skin beneath his jaw. “They move us around. Take the strongest ones out at night.” “Where?” “Nobody comes back to tell us.” He was twenty-four, he told her while she worked at the children's door. He had been moved through three holding facilities in six weeks. At the first, he had frozen a transport axle. At the second, they had learned to cover his mouth. Here, they made him wear the mask even to sleep. “The little ones think I'm leaving today,” he said. “I told them I'd find a way back.” Rougie pulled the latch out of its housing. “Save yourself the trip.” * * * Monsta lay on his side beneath the console, holding a strip of shirt over his nose. The vapor had made his arms heavy while the sound drilled behind his eyes. “The baby survived the assault,” Apocalypto said. “You examined the mother. I want the readings.” “Buy a parenting book.” One screen changed to footage of the mansion collapsing. Another showed prisoner photographs beside measurements and transfer dates. Monsta saw the Purity Division emblem on an equipment order, then Jeanetta's photograph above a projection that climbed beyond the edge of its graph. “You supplying di hunters.” “Through people they find acceptable. They believe they are cleansing the world. Meanwhile, they catalog abilities, isolate potential rivals, and deliver the prisoners I select.” Monsta pulled himself up against the console. “And when they learn what you are?” “They will have served their purpose.” Apocalypto leaned toward his camera, his plum lipstick immaculate. “Separately, your people hide. Together, they begin imagining they can oppose me. I prefer them separated.” “Until one little pickney stronger than you.” For a moment, the man on the screen said nothing. “No mutant has exceeded me.” Monsta looked at the graph. “Yet.” The sonic whine stopped. The sudden quiet was worse. Monsta could hear his own breath and, beneath it, a second sound that did not belong underground. Cicadas. A smaller monitor switched on. A purple figure stood against a dark background, its edges glowing softly, its face almost lost in the light. It did not move its mouth. It only watched. “My protégé,” Apocalypto said. “Broteus.” Monsta turned toward the door. There was no door. Warm sunlight fell across his feet. The concrete beneath them had become packed dirt. Beyond a low fence, a woman shook a sheet out beside a house with a patched zinc roof. He knew that house. His hands were brown. Human. Long fingers, old burn mark near the thumb. He touched his face and found the beard he had worn before America, before Dover, before strangers started crossing streets to avoid him. He was lean again. For one foolish, aching second, he forgot the bunker. “Omari!” The voice came from the little repair shed beside the house. His cousin stood in the doorway holding a radio with its back removed. Then Monsta saw the truck coming up the road. His stomach dropped. He knew the day, too. Years before he met Zachary, armed men had demanded that he repair stolen radio equipment for their crew. He had refused. When they came back, his cousin had tried to keep them out of the shed. Monsta had spent the rest of his life remembering how little time there had been between the argument and the shot. Now he ran. “Get inside!” His cousin turned toward him, confused. The truck door opened. Monsta reached for a shoulder he had not touched in decades. The gun went off. He caught his cousin before he hit the dirt. The radio struck the ground beside them, its loose parts scattering at his knees. “No. No, mi here this time.” He pressed both hands against the wound. He had stronger hands now. He had saved people crushed beneath buildings. There had to be something he could do. But the hands in front of him were human, and the blood would not stop. Somewhere a voice repeated the warning that had driven him out of Jamaica: next time, the rest of the house. He had left with one bag, believing distance might keep his family alive. He had never stopped hearing the shot. Now he heard it again. The radio was back in his cousin's hands. The truck was coming up the road. This time, Monsta ran toward the truck. * * * The service van stood empty beneath the trees. Reen stopped the borrowed car behind it and climbed out with his claws already extending. Z had waited through one missed check-in, tried the radio, then felt Monsta's mind disappear beneath something he could not identify. He had left Cyrus and Stormisha guarding the ridge house. Nightwalka could barely twist without holding his ribs. Scambit had called after them from the porch until Jeanetta helped him back inside. Now Z followed brief bursts of distress through the trees while Reen pushed his chair over roots and wet ground. They found Monsta's bag beside a patch of disturbed grass. Reen scraped away mud until a metal seam appeared. The trapdoor lay almost flush with the earth. He caught the recessed handle and pulled. It did not move. Z reached downward with his mind. A gunshot. A broken radio. Monsta kneeling in sunlight that could not possibly reach him there. Then the memory shifted, and Z smelled the disinfectant of Dover Institute. He jerked back in his chair. “What?” Reen asked. “Someone is making him relive things.” Reen drove his claws into the hatch seam. Under the earth, Monsta stood before a circular chamber surrounded by copper rings. The dirt beneath his feet had become polished flooring. His cousin was gone. Dr. Benjamin Dover smiled beside the controls. “No,” Monsta said. “You dead.” Dover continued explaining the Ascension Engine as though he had not spoken. Curtis entered the chamber. Isaiah followed, then Leonard. Young Zachary stood beside Trick, still wearing the hair and confidence the machine would take from him. Monsta seized Zachary's arm. “Don't go in there.” The glass closed around all six of them. He had not moved, but somehow he was inside. Gas spilled from the ceiling. Copper rings began to turn. Beyond the glass, Misty's borrowed face dissolved, revealing blue skin and yellow eyes. Monsta struck the glass with the metal stool already in his hands. Electricity threw him backward. His spine bowed. His shoulders expanded. Blue spread across his arms while his fingers thickened against the floor. He remembered this pain; remembering offered no protection from feeling it again. Above him, Reen cut through the hatch's outer hinge. His claws caught a cable hidden in its frame. For one second, Monsta was back in the bunker. He lay against the console, already blue, his shirt torn from the mansion attack. A camera's red light blinked out. On the small screen, the purple figure remained perfectly still. Then a second lens rotated above the door. The copper rings returned. Monsta screamed as his body began changing all over again. * * * The first guard found the empty mask. He was still staring at it when Ice Tray blew across the floor. A slick sheet formed beneath the man's boots. He went down hard, and Rougie caught his rifle before he could bring it around. She drove him against the wall, stripped his keycard, and shut him inside the room he had used to hold the children. “Everybody behind me,” Ice Tray said. The children moved before Rougie had to ask. They knew him. A girl with translucent fingertips clung to the back of his shirt. Rougie tried the keycard at a side exit. Green light flashed. Beyond it stood a loading bay with a white transport bus and two guards checking a clipboard. The younger guard looked up first. Rougie hit him before he could shout. His shoulder struck the bus. She caught the second man's bare wrist as he reached for his radio. His memories broke across her in ugly flashes: a delivery receipt, prisoners tied to chairs, a black truck leaving through a northern gate. A phrase repeated during a briefing. Priority gestational subject. Jeanetta's photograph. Rougie let go so abruptly that the guard stumbled. Ice Tray blew a hard stream of frost across his rifle, freezing the trigger assembly, and Rougie knocked him unconscious with the useless weapon. The alarm began before either of them could speak. Red lamps spun above the loading doors. In the yard beyond, guards turned toward the building. “Get them on the bus,” Rougie said. “You got keys?” She searched the fallen guard and held them up. “You got a license?” Ice Tray asked. “You want to walk?” “Just establishing our situation.” He herded the children aboard, counting each one with a hand on their shoulder. Rougie pulled open the loading-bay controls. Across the yard, prisoners pressed against the inner fence as they realized what was happening. She could not take them all on one bus. The thought nearly stopped her. Ice Tray saw her looking. “We get these kids out alive,” he said. “Then we come back with enough people to open every damn door.” A ceramic round shattered the window beside her head. Rougie ducked into the driver's seat. Ice Tray stood in the open doorway, drew a breath, and blew across the approaching guards. Ice spread over shields and boots, binding the first rank to the pavement. He bent forward coughing. Rougie put the bus in gear. * * * The damaged hatch rose three inches before a second set of locking bars stopped it. Reen jammed a broken branch into the gap and cut until hot metal fell down the stairs. Z leaned forward, searching for Monsta through the confusion below. Monsta. Listen to me. For a moment, his friend heard him. Z? Don't let them start it. The Engine is gone. You're in the bunker. Reen and I are above you. But Monsta was looking at another Engine now, the larger one beneath the train terminal in 1986. Eight years had passed in a blink. Curtis was moving toward the central mechanism. Isaiah's body glowed with unstable light. Leonard's copies were spreading around the core. Monsta knew exactly what each of them was about to do. He lunged for Curtis. His fingers closed on empty air as his friend threw himself into the rotating rings. Energy swallowed the broad shoulders Monsta remembered from the boxing gym. Isaiah dissolved into the cooling system. Leonard shouted through a hundred mouths, telling him to rip the primary conductor loose. “Mi know what happen!” Monsta roared. “Come back out!” He refused to touch the conductor. This time he would not do the thing that came just before the explosion. It exploded anyway. When the light cleared, their places were empty. Aboveground, Z doubled over. Reen caught his shoulder before he slipped from the chair. “Stay out of his head if it's doing that to you.” “He thinks he's there.” Blood ran from Z's nose onto his shirt. He wiped it away and tried again. Below them, Monsta heard him through the ringing in his ears. We are trying to reach you. “Then reach!” Reen tore one locking bar loose. The hatch shifted, revealing the stairs beneath it and, at their foot, another steel door. He could see no part of Monsta. He lowered himself onto the first step. An alarm sounded from inside the shaft. Z caught the back of his jacket as a shutter slammed across the stairwell just below Reen's boots. The impact shook dirt from the hatch frame. Reen climbed back out, swearing, and immediately knelt to cut the new barrier. “We're not leaving him down there.” Z said nothing. He was already reaching again. * * * The bus struck the inner gate and stalled. Children screamed as the front steps crumpled. Rougie tried the ignition again. The engine turned without catching. Ahead, a second gate remained shut beneath two watchtowers. Silver capsules burst against the windshield. “Down!” Ice Tray shouted. He pulled a little boy beneath a seat while Rougie slammed the air vents closed. Beyond the cracked glass, more guards were coming. Ice Tray put his hand on her shoulder, careful to touch only her jacket. “The hinges,” he said. “I can freeze them. Can you break them?” “Yeah.” “Then quit looking at that key like it's gonna apologize.” They went out together. Ice Tray stayed behind the bus's hood and blew toward the gate. Frost raced over the nearest hinge. Rougie hit it with both hands. The brittle joint shattered. A shot grazed her sleeve. She tore the gate from its remaining bracket and held it between them and the rifles. Bullets punched the sheet metal. Ice Tray staggered against her, struggling for air. “Need a second,” he gasped. “Take two.” She drove the gate forward, sweeping the nearest guards off their feet, then planted it at an angle against the bus to shield the children climbing down. They ran for the outer fence. At the watchtower, a guard swung a mounted weapon toward them. Rougie felt her feet leave the ground before she meant to jump. This time she understood what was happening. She rose over the fence, caught the weapon's barrel, and bent it upward. The guard lunged for her. She swung him back into his seat hard enough to keep him there, then dropped toward the gate controls. Below her, Ice Tray had reached the final lock. He braced his hands on his knees, took one painful breath, and blew. The housing whitened. Rougie landed with both boots against it. The outer gate swung open. Beyond lay a drainage channel, a service road, and woods thick enough to hide in. Ice Tray counted the children as they passed. At eleven, he stopped. The girl with translucent fingertips stood frozen beside the bus, staring at the guards getting up. Rougie flew back before he could call her name. She lifted the girl against her jacket and rose as rounds struck the pavement beneath them. Small hands locked around her collar. “Don't look down,” Rougie whispered. The girl buried her face against her shoulder. They cleared the fence together. * * * A small speaker crackled beneath the grass. “Professor.” Reen slashed toward it. Z caught his wrist. “Let him speak.” Apocalypto's voice was calm. “Your friend is alive. How long he remains useful depends on you.” “What are you doing to him?” “Reminding him how little his strength has ever protected.” Z glanced at the narrow opening. Reen's claws could cut the steel, but every layer took time. Below it, another mechanism was moving. “Bring me Jeanetta,” Apocalypto said. “No,” Reen answered. “Then continue digging.” An image reached Z through Monsta's mind: Jeanetta's photograph, the rising graph, transfer records marked with the hunters' emblem. Beneath it all lay Monsta's horror at understanding why the baby had been targeted. Z gripped the chair until his fingers hurt. “You're afraid of her child.” The speaker clicked off. From the gap in the hatch came the hiss of pressurized vapor. Reen turned his face away as silver mist curled over the grass. “Back up.” Z could still feel Monsta. He reached harder, trying to give him something steady to hold on to. Instead, he found himself beneath the train terminal, listening to Leonard scream. His own memory joined Monsta's. For a moment he could not separate them. Curtis vanished into the Engine. Isaiah came apart. The conductor tore loose. Z stopped breathing. Reen pulled the chair away from the hatch. The professor was rigid, eyes open but seeing nothing in the woods. Reen slapped his cheek, once, hard enough to bring his gaze back. “Stay with me.” Z dragged air into his lungs. Behind them, vapor spread over the opening. Reen's cuts were bleeding freely now; the suppressant was slowing his healing. “I can go back,” Z whispered. “You just went somewhere. It damn near killed you.” A distant flash of cold air crossed Z's awareness. Rougie, frightened and moving quickly. Children. A drainage channel beneath a road marker. He caught the location before it slipped away and repeated it to Reen. Then he turned toward the hatch again. “Monsta.” There was no answer he could understand. Only grief, changing into something harder. Reen looked from the professor to the gas spreading through the clearing. He had never hated a piece of ground more. “We need equipment. Everybody who can stand. We come back ready.” “He'll think we abandoned him.” Reen's jaw tightened. He pushed the chair toward the car before Z could lose consciousness again. Behind them, beneath the broken hatch and the barriers they had failed to cut through, Monsta shouted for someone who could no longer hear him. * * * By late afternoon, every clean blanket in the ridge house belonged to a child. Stormisha had met Rougie near the service road in a borrowed passenger van, made two trips, and spent both of them watching the rearview mirror. Reen had called with the location Z managed to give him. He said they were heading back, but the professor was in no shape to explain anything yet. Cyrus checked the road afterward until he was satisfied nobody had followed. Now the kitchen held bowls, borrowed chairs, and twelve children who kept asking permission before touching anything. Jeanetta put bread within reach of the smallest boy. “You don't gotta ask for another piece.” He looked at Z to make sure. The professor nodded, and the boy took two. Outside, Rougie helped Ice Tray carry the last stack of blankets up the porch steps. “When things settle down, maybe me and you could hang out,” she said quietly. “Without people shooting at us.” “As friends, sure. I'm gay, baby.” She paused, then handed him the blankets. “Could've told me before I embarrassed myself.” “You ain't embarrassed yourself. You asked.” He went inside to check on the children. Rougie took a moment on the porch before following. Scambit waited in the hallway when Rougie finally came inside. She stopped at the sight of him standing on his crutch. “You supposed to be in bed.” “You supposed to be here.” She looked down. There was mud on her boots, blood on one sleeve, and a child's loose shoelace tied around her wrist from where she had promised to help with it later. “I couldn't leave them.” “I ain't asking you to.” His voice tightened. “I'm asking you not to make me find out you gone from an empty chair.” She stepped close enough to rest her forehead against his, careful of his balance. “I'm sorry.” He closed his eyes for a moment. Then he looked past her. Ice Tray crossed the far end of the hall wearing a borrowed jacket over his prison clothes. A little boy followed him into the kitchen, asking whether his freezing breath worked on soup. “Who that?” Scambit asked. “Ice Tray. He helped me get the kids out.” Scambit watched the kitchen doorway. A slight New Orleans drawl softened his words, but it did nothing to hide the edge in them. “So Ice Mane staying with us now?” “He just escaped a prison camp. You want me to put him on the porch?” “I'm just asking, cher.” Rougie leaned back against the wall. “And I'm trying to figure out what you really asking.” “Nothing. You and Ice Mane just seem real comfortable, that's all.” “We kept each other alive.” That quieted him, but he kept glancing toward the kitchen. Rougie caught the next look and shook her head. “Scambit. He's gay.” His eyes returned to hers. “He told you that?” “Yes.” Scambit's shoulders relaxed before he could stop them. “Well, somebody oughta get that man a plate.” Rougie laughed. “Thirty seconds ago you wanted to know when he was leaving.” “I ain't say all that.” “You didn't have to.” She slid a chair behind him, and this time he sat without arguing. Reen came through the front door before she could say anything else. His jacket was streaked with dirt. The professor sat in his chair behind him, pale beneath the dried blood at his nose. One hand trembled on the armrest. Rougie straightened. “Where Monsta?” Z looked toward the kitchen. Twelve children were eating. Ice Tray stood beside the youngest, cutting a piece of bread into smaller portions. “You brought them all this way?” Z asked. “There more still there. A lot more.” “We will talk about going alone,” he said gently. “But what you did matters. Every one of those children is safe tonight because you went.” Rougie waited. Reen would not look at her. “Professor. Where is he?” Z asked Ice Tray to stay with the children. Then he called the others into the back room. Cyrus came from the window. Stormisha put down the van keys. Nightwalka lowered himself carefully onto the edge of the medical cot. Monsta's folded coat lay beside him. Jeanetta remained near the door. “Monsta is still in the bunker,” Z said. “They trapped him. Reen and I tried to reach him, and we couldn't.” “Couldn't how?” Stormisha asked. “Sealed stairs. More than one barrier. Suppressant.” Reen flexed a hand with a half-healed cut across its palm. “We never got close enough to see him.” Z looked down at Monsta's coat. “There is someone else working with the man who hired Misty. I saw a glowing purple figure through Monsta's memories. Whatever that person is doing, Monsta believes he is back inside the worst days of his life.” Nobody spoke. “He's alive,” Z said. “But he is in deep trouble. We need a way through that bunker before we send anyone else down those stairs.” Nightwalka reached into his pocket and felt for the scrap of paper his mother had given him. Jeanetta watched Z's face. “And me?” The professor looked up. “They asked for you in exchange for him.” Cyrus moved closer to her. Reen leaned against the wall, arms folded tightly. “Nobody agreed to a damn thing,” he said. Z explained what he had seen: the prisoner records, the equipment orders, the graph beside the baby's image. Apocalypto was supplying the Division through human contractors and selecting mutants for transfer. The hunters did not know who was using them. “His name is Apocalypso,” Z said, exhausted. “He believes your child may become stronger than he is.” Rougie stared at him. “The transfers,” she said. “Ice Tray said people get taken away at night. They don't come back.” Z nodded slowly. From the kitchen came a child's small laugh. It sounded painfully out of place in the silence that followed. Jeanetta rested a hand on her stomach. “So those kids are free, and now he got Monsta.” “Yes,” Z said. “Then we get him back.” For the first time since entering the room, Reen looked directly at the professor. “Yeah,” he said. “We do.” * * * Deep beneath the woods, the bunker cameras adjusted to follow Monsta. He stood in the train terminal again. Curtis was alive. Isaiah was whole. Leonard was turning toward him with the conductor cable in his hands. Monsta did not move to take it. Somewhere beyond the memory, the purple figure watched without speaking. “Enough,” Monsta said. The copper rings began to turn. He struck them with both fists. In the bunker, a steel table folded against the wall. Blood ran over his knuckles, but he barely felt it. He had begged. He had warned them. He had tried every way he could remember to save people who were already gone. Now he looked past Leonard, toward the place where Dover should have stood. “Show mi who watching.” Apocalypto's voice returned from the screen above. "Don't be afraid to reveal what you truly are," he said with dark laugh. "A ferocious, animalistic beast." "No!" Monsta roared. The Engine answered with its rising whine. Monsta hit it again. It was too late.

X-Mans Paat Nighn: Bomboclat!

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