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Chapters
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
 
 
 

The Companion Picture - REVIEW THIS STORY

Written by Dandelion
Last updated: 12/03/2009 06:26:08 PM

Chapter 21

The New Mexico desert stretched across to all horizons. Barren, abandoned, and alone. Lorna Dane walked slowly up the road, toward a house that stood in silence. Her mind was fuzzy, not completely clear, not wanting to be. If she tried to understand everything she had heard in the last twenty-four hours she was certain she would crack.

"Lorna we have to talk," Forge came into her room late in the evening.

Lorna had taken a long soak in the bath and was reading her mail. She had just started the letter she had received from Brett. "Sure, Forge come on in."

Forge's face was bleak. "We have to get you out of here," he said quietly.

Lorna sat up, immediately on guard. She didn't like that look on Forge's face at all. "Get me out of here, why?"

Silently, he handed her some of the documents he and Mystique had got from the computer files. Lorna read them over slowly, words like "genetic warfare", "virus-L", and "factor-X experimentation" swimming before her eyes. "What does this mean, Forge?" She already knew, but she didn't want to believe it.

"We are all in danger," Forge's voice was low and serious. "The Department of Defense has started implenting tests to make the Legacy Virus into a genetic weapon. X-Factor is slated for termination at any moment and we are trying to beat them to the punch," Forge gave a heavy sigh. "What we are working for right now is counter-intelligence. When the boys come to shut us down we won't be here. But I've got to get you out of here now."

"Why?" Lorna shook her head. "Let me stay and fight with you. There's got to be an alternative. Maybe if we leaked all of this to the press..." Her voice trailed off.

Forge smiled at her, "You're brave, Lorna. You're tough and you're smart. That's why you're leaving. You are an Alpha Class mutant and the government would love to get their hands on you to experiment on. They've already tested you one way with -"

"Project: Polaris," Lorna finished. "They said it was a failsafe for the Magneto Protocols." She turned away. "What makes you so sure that they'll come for me anyway?"

"They already got Alex."

The words hit Lorna like a ton of bricks.

She froze.

Forge looked at her sadly, wishing there was another way to tell her and knowing there wasn't.

"I'm sorry Lorna, Alex is gone."

"I don't believe you," her voice shook. "I *can't* believe you." She sounded dangerously close to tears.

Forge turned her around and grabbed her arms, "Listen to me, Lorna, what I'm about to ask of you is extremely important and very difficult. But it will keep you alive, do you understand me?"

His timing had been perfect. Lorna was hovering on the edge of despair and denial. Forge's words kept her in denial. And denial, while not allowing her to mourn for Alex, kept her functioning on a strong, instinctual level.

"I understand."

"I know that Lorna is going to need to grieve," Forge said clearly, choosing to separate her into her civilian and official identities. He hoped it would further allow her to separate her need for emotional release from her need to survive. "But I have to ask Polaris to take control first. You have to leave and go somewhere where you will be safe. You have to get to a place where they can't find you."

She nodded.

"Lorna, I'm sorry.."

"Don't." Lorna pulled away. "If I can't grieve, don't start saying things that will make me start thinking of..him."

Forge nodded slowly. "Do you have a place to go? I will meet you when I can."

Lorna looked around the room slowly, wondering. Her eyes fell on Brett's letter. "The Bermuda Triangle," she whispered.

Forge nodded and then pulled a briefcase from the floor. "Take only what you need," he instructed as he opened it. He handed her several billfolds. "This will cover you, and your tracks. I've got an escape route mapped out for you." He handed her a handheld electronic device. "Take all of your identification except for your X-Factor badge, leave that under the bed, I'll get it later. When you get to where you're going, lock all of your IDs up somewhere. I'll be back here in an hour, I want you long gone by then."

She nodded.

"I'll find you when I can."

"Okay," she was already packing.

Forge's electronic mapper had led her out of the city through the sewers. From there she had gone straight north and powered up at the polar north pole. Polaris went from there to the electro-magnetic fields of the southwest and the life she had been taken from many years before.

Where she was now. The house didn't look as though it had been inhabited since she and Alex had left it. The surrounding area looked neglected as well.

She headed towards the house to say good-bye for the last time. She would grieve here. Polaris had kept everything together during her escape, but Lorna Dane was about to break free. As she walked towards the house her shoes clicked on a hard surface.

Looking down she saw she was standing on an irregular shaped sheet of glass.

A strangled cry escaped her as she clapped a hand over her mouth. She remembered her lover running from the house, glowing like a star. She remembered following him, calling him, worried for him. He hadn't been the same since he had returned from New York when he had gone looking for the X-Men. His power had been going haywire. He ran out into the desert night and unleashed his plasma burst into the sky... "Alex..." she wept, falling to her knees and touching the glass. "Oh Alex, how did this happen to us?"

Lorna Dane fell against the glass sobbing loudly, her body shaking, yielding for the moment to the hopelessness that consumed her.

"We've got her on our scanners now," the young woman spoke softy into the microphone on her communications link.

"Good," came the response. "You know what to do."

"She won't know what hit her, Sir," the young woman looked to her companions and nodded. Between the four of them they could take down the person identified as Mutant Designate: Polaris.

Lorna drifted around the property aimlessly. Her eyes would pause in certain areas and she would succumb to the memories that broke free of her. She ran her fingers over the clawmarks on a boulder, remembering the night the Marauders came.

Nothing was the same after that. Alex had left to find out why he was being plagued by nightmares. And Malice had infiltrated her soul. Lorna shuddered violently, remembering the tawdry thrill deep in her soul at the lack of inhibition when it came to her powers. She had left with the Marauders and had never come back. Until now. She touched the clawmarks again, remembering Sabretooth's breath on her back as he hunted her down. No matter what she did, no matter how she clobbered him with everything around her, he had kept coming.

Lorna tore herself away and went into the house.

For several moments she looked around her, stunned not only by the appearance of the place, but just by the shock of being in her home again after so long.

She stepped carefully, through the debris that neglect had brought on. The desert had begun to penetrate the house, reclaiming it.

All Lorna saw were pieces of a life she would never have again. She felt cold inside. She felt hard. She wanted to rage against the forces that took her life and her love away and make them pay dearly for the damage they had wrought. There was no way she could, and she knew it, for on this desert and in this house she was completely and utterly alone.

"We're approaching the current location of Mutant Designate: Polaris," the young woman reported to her team-mates."

The jeep they sat in lumbered to a stop and they climbed out adjusting weapons and stretching limbs.

"Just remember, take her down hard and fast. She's a Class A and we'd be better off if she didn't get a chance to stretch her powers. Is everyone ready?"

Three nods were the reply.

"Move out."

Lorna lay on the tattered blankets of the bed that she and Alex used to share.

"The last time I was here with you, Alex," she whispered, "you ran out and turned the desert to glass. And our lives shattered." She stared at the ceiling. Hours upon hours of running and hiding had begun to tell. She felt her eyes roll back and as she let her mind go numb she could feel the magnetism of the area tingle in her very nerves.

She let the electro-magnetism caress her, soothe her, let her forget...

Her eyes flew open. She had felt something off. Where nothing should be in the EM field there were four objects, moving slowly towards her location.

Lorna got off the bed and went to the window.

"Come to play, have you?" she hissed at the desert.

"The time for games is over."

She went outside.

The squad leader motioned to the others to prepare the final advance. She burst out from behind the boulder to run to the house where Polaris had entered and came to a skidding stop after three steps.

Mutant Designate: Polaris was waiting for them.

"Now! Now! NOW!!!"

Operative 3 leveled his stun rifle at the mutant as the other three squad members made to surround Polaris.

A boulder flew threw the air and crushed his skull before he was even set to fire. His body crumpled to the ground as the desert dust started picking up and swirling wildly within the area. The squad leader was stunned. Mutant Designate: Polaris was not listed as normally using lethal methods. "Adjust!" she shouted into the comm-link.

The other two operatives opened fire on Polaris, who launched into the air wordlessly as the dust swirled thicker. A strangled cry and a dull THUD marked the sudden death of the Operative 2 as two boulders slammed together with her in between. Polaris finally spoke: "You couldn't have made a bigger mistake. You will not get the chance to tell anybody you saw me. Say good-bye, you sick, pathetic bastards."

The dust grew thicker. The squad leader put together the situation. They were in an area of high iron content and Mutant Designate: Polaris was not in the mood to be merciful. Already, their instruments were dust damaged and shorting. "All I wanted to do was say good-bye, and you had to come and fuck it all up!!" A green glow emanated from above. "I was an archeologist once, you know. Consider this my stab at irony. No one will find you god-damned pawns for a few thousand years!!!"

The squad leader heard another sickening, dull crunch as her last operative was killed by Mutant Designate: Polaris' rage. She knew it was only a matter of time for her. She scrambled in the dust looking for her dropped neutralizer. Her vision blurred and she felt slow and dull.

Lorna watched the squad leader flounder in the sand and dust from above. She had manipulated the EM field around the operative so that her blood-iron was affected. The operative's vital functions were dulling as a result. Lorna's face was stony. <You and your people took Alex from me. Now you come after me when all I wanted was to say good-bye one last time. Suffer. Suffer and go to fucking hell.>

In the end, Lorna finished the squad leader off with another boulder. She couldn't bring herself to torture the person to death. Despite all of the rage and grief within her she just couldn't stomach it.

The desert was once more calm. Four half-buried bodies lay sprawled in the sand. Lorna looked over the scene and choked. She fell to the sand again, weeping loudly,

"I didn't want this!!!" She screamed at the sky. "I didn't want *any* of this!! Xavier!! Look at what you've done to me! To Alex!! We wanted to be left alone and you *wouldn't*!! And now Alex is *dead*!!" She fell against the ground, pounding her fists against the packed dirt and shrieking her pain for nothing but the ghosts to hear.

The sun cast long shadows on the ground as it sank to the west. Lorna sat watching them grow. Silence had enveloped her as her grief ebbed away. Slowly she got to her feet and looked once more at the house. "Good-bye, my love," she whispered. Once more, Lorna Dane reached out with her power and all the raw feelings of loss within her. She pulled the earth open and watched it swallow her house, her former dreams and all remnants of her life and the people who had come to destroy it. She looked over her work and the now barren New Mexico desert. "Good-bye." She lifted off the ground and headed south, before turning once more and heading towards what she hoped was a haven in the Bermuda Triangle.

 

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