The Game of Empires - REVIEW THIS STORY

Written by Valerie Jones
Last updated: 02/13/2010 03:54:13 PM

Chapter 3

She touched the tall light pole, smiling slightly as the warm glow surrounded her. A rustle alerted her and she turned to find Apocalypse sitting up in the bed, watching her. His expression was inscrutable and Renee had to throttle the desire to bolt from the room. Her hand felt like it was locked around the light pole, which was quickly growing warm. Despite his weakness, Apocalypse frightened her. This was the evil of the ages, an ancient and terrible creature who had roamed the Earth for millennia.

After a moment, she forced herself to let go of the light and walked over to the opposite corner of the room. Apocalypse’s gaze followed her, but he did not say anything. Renee reached for the tall lamp, wondering what, if anything, it meant that he was going to let her finish turning on the lights.

Finally, she forced herself to walk back to the bed. The dark eyes tracked her. The skin around them was no longer quite so sunken, Renee noted, and his eyes had lost some of their bruised look. She expanded her examination to take in the rest of his face. The bones still showed prominently under his skin, outlining the shape of his skull. Renee always marveled at the incredibly wide, square jaw that made him look so utterly inhuman. But the skin of his face seemed to have taken on a new elasticity and did not sag in unhealthy wrinkles as it had before. He was definitely healing. Her gaze dropped lower. He was still going to have a very long recovery, though. The heavy muscles of his chest and shoulders were badly atrophied. He was not going to be able to simply spring out of bed once he started to feel better. Briefly she wondered what Uncle Hank would think of her now. She had wanted to become a doctor and had spent a great deal of time under his tutelage, helping him tend to the X-Men’s various injuries. What would he have thought of playing nursemaid to Apocalypse himself?

Apocalypse studied her with similar interest. Renee felt a bit like a lab rat beneath the coldly intelligent stare.

"You are afraid of me," he finally said. It was not a question, and Renee didn’t answer. She found herself staring at the headboard beyond his shoulder while he continued to watch her. She wanted to fidget, to toy with the jewelry that adorned her hands, but she forced herself to stand still. She would give away as little with her body language as she could.

"Child, look at me."

Renee’s breath froze in her chest as she raised her eyes, compelled by the deep, resonant voice.

"What reason have I given you for fear?"

Renee could read no expression on his face, but there was a hint of curiosity in his voice. She wondered if he already knew the answer to his question.

She gathered her courage. "You’re Apocalypse," she finally told him. "And I’m your prisoner."

Her reply seemed to please him. He settled back against the pillows and pulled the heavy blankets up around himself. It was such an ordinary, human action that Renee was momentarily surprised. But history had never recorded Apocalypse as a man -- only as a mutant -- and until a few weeks ago, the history was all she had known.

"Are... you ready?" she asked as his motion stilled.

"Tell me your name first."

Renee paused. She had assumed he simply didn’t care who she was. It was somewhat unnerving to think that, as he began to feel better, he might ask her more and more personal questions. The past was not something she wanted to talk about

"Nightengale."

He lifted an eyebrow and Renee blinked in surprise. It was the first expression she’d ever seen.

"You give me a mutant name. That is good." Renee breathed a silent sigh of relief as Apocalypse closed his eyes. "I am ready."

Renee nodded. Despite having done so many times before, it made her nervous to settle on the edge of the bed next to him. As always, he gave no discernible reaction as she reached over to place her bare hands flat on his chest. She loathed the feeling of skin against her own, but this was what Apocalypse demanded of her -- and what she had agreed to. She did not want to find out how he would punish her if she refused him.

The tingling sensation of her powers started in her palms, spreading through her body and then seeming to leap directly into her mind. She fought to control the feeling, to direct her powers to heal, to rebuild the cells. On a level she could not describe, she could sense the disease that ravaged Apocalypse. She could feel what was damaged and what was not. Cell by cell, she forced the damaged areas to grow whole, pushing the disease another step backward.

She stayed that way until her head began to spin. Apocalypse did not respond as she withdrew her hands. He was asleep. Aching with the drain of her powers, Renee stood up. She stared at the still face for a moment, mind empty, then turned away. Shala would be waiting for her outside, to take her back to her room.

Renee stared at the rain blowing against the hotel window without seeing it. It was monsoon season, and the streets of Jakarta were always wet. The hotel was of only moderate quality, but better than many she had seen. The rattle and clink of a metal chain made her turn. The man she had come there with was in the process of unlocking a handcuff from his wrist. The other end was attached to a black briefcase. Renee watched without interest as he attached the empty cuff to the iron frame of the bed.

He was a Chinese businessman with an international market for his miniature orchids. But Renee was there because he also served as a courier for the Chinese government. Currently, he was helping them to purchase Russian arms and pouring out of the fractured remains of the Soviet Union. Unfortunately for him, he had decided to double-cross the people who employed him.

The man pulled off his tie and began to unbutton his shirt. Renee’s pulse quickened as she watched him. The Shadow King was hungry for this one. The Chinese government did not yet know of his defection, but if he was allowed to go over, he could do tremendous damage to their plans. China was quietly gathering an army that no force on the planet would be able to stand against. They were buying aircraft carries, fighters, ballistic missiles and weapons of mass destruction -- all very, very quietly. And with the Shadow King’s assistance, they were virtually unobserved.

Had she been able to, Renee would have screamed. But her Master controlled her every motion and she could do nothing but slide toward the Chinese man, pulling off her gloves as she did so. She didn’t know his name, nor did she care. He was a pervert to have picked up a sixteen-year-old prostitute in the little bar he frequented when in the city. Renee smoothed her short skirt, and under the Shadow King’s control, the motion became a caress.

The man’s eyes lit with the animal hunger Renee had come to recognize. She raised her hands and moved to kiss him. His mouth was wet and slimy on hers and she knotted her hands in his hair as he jerked in pain, trying instinctively to pull away from her. Renee hooked her foot behind his ankle and yanked. He crashed to the floor on his back with Renee landing atop him. She smothered the sound of his screams with her mouth over his, using her weight and leverage to hold him to the floor as he thrashed wildly. The gruesome effect of her powers rippled across his skin, and by the time he had grown still, there was nothing left but an unrecognizable lump of flesh. She rolled off of him, curling into a fetal ball as the Shadow King’s spasms of pleasure coursed through her.

Renee woke screaming. Immediately, the darkness was shattered by a piercing light as the door to her room was thrown open and two figures rushed in. The guards held their swords ready as they moved through the room, searching for the threat. One of them came over to the bed, his ears swiveling in constant motion. Renee barely registered him. She dragged the covers up to her chin and squeezed her eyes shut as violent tremors shook her.

Jean Summers was drowning in sewage. She hated this part. It was the chasm Onslaught had thrown her into at their first real meeting, when he had forcibly taken her to the Astral plane and shown her Charles’ repressed memories. She struggled to keep her head above the roiling surface while Onslaught loomed over her. These were all of the worst things Charles had ever thought, ever felt. They sickened her with their ugliness, but Jean knew better than to let them sully her opinion of the Professor. He was just a man, as human and fallible as the rest of them. She was determined not to judge him for his weaknesses. She had never once seen him act on these darker impulses, and she knew that Onslaught had only shown them to her in an attempt to shatter her loyalty to his dream.

It was this pit that bothered her, though. Not for its contents, exactly, but for some other reason that she was still struggling to piece together. Scott would be upset if he knew that she was going through these memories yet again, but she couldn’t help it. There was something so very wrong here. Something subtle that she just could not pin down. It was almost as if Charles’ darkest secrets had a secret of their own. They loomed all around her, hinting at something just beyond her recognition.

Then it struck her. This pit was all wrong because it shouldn’t exist like this. People didn’t throw all of their darkest thoughts into one great pit of ugliness. It was too hard to ignore that way. Instead, they tucked individual thoughts and memories away into little crevices in their minds where they could easily be overlooked. It was a kind of self-defense mechanism that literally every person Jean had ever mind-scanned used, because no one wanted to be reminded of their guilt.

Charles had made this pit and poured everything he hated about himself into it. Jean was almost certain he had to have done it on purpose. But why? She tried to push herself up out of the glop to look around. The stone walls rose all around her, their sides worn smooth from the constant motion of the muck, and their reddish color reminiscent of blood. The memories themselves were a putrescence soup that smelled of bile and less pleasant things. It was the last place Jean would have chosen to be. In fact, even Onslaught had eschewed the place, though he had been happy enough to shove Jean face first into it.

Jean paused. Could that be why? Could Charles have created this place for just that reason -- because it was so repugnant that neither friend nor enemy would willingly go there? Onslaught had been able to scrape enough ugliness off the surface that he hadn’t seen need to delve deeper into Charles’ memories. He had gotten what he wanted very easily, it seemed, without having to dredge through this pit himself.

Jean sucked in a deep breath and, closing her eyes, dove into the disgusting muck. What was Charles hiding down here? It was obvious to her now that he had created the pit as a shield for something he wanted to hide even more desperately than these memories. She swam downward, struggling as the sludge became thicker and thicker. But just when she was about to give up, her hand struck something. Something hard and smooth that stretched across the bottom of the pit. She explored it with her fingers until she was certain. There was something down here. Something that Charles had wanted to hide so desperately that he had been willing to show Onslaught his darkest thoughts and most evil impulses in order to protect it.

She opened her eyes and immediately sought out her husband’s mental touch. Scott?

I’m here, Jean.

I found it, Scott. I found what’s been bothering me.

She felt Scott pause in what he was doing. There was a sense of both relief and dread from him. What was it?

Seated on their bed, Jean wrapped her arms around her knees. Charles was hiding something. He gave Onslaught all of those other repressed memories just to distract him from this other thing he was hiding.

She could feel Scott thinking it over, though she didn’t listen in on his thoughts. Do you know what it was? he asked.

Jean shook her head, though he couldn’t see her. No. I’d have to scan him if I wanted to find out.

The silence following her statement grew uncomfortable. I don’t know, Jean, Scott finally answered. That seems a little extreme. How do we know he wasn’t trying to protect the X-Men somehow? He could have been hiding the code keys to our databases or a dozen other legitimate things. Besides, we don’t even know where he is right now.

Jean knotted her hands in the quilted bedcover. I know, but... I just don’t think so. Call it intuition if you want. That pit of memories was old, Scott. He didn’t create it when Onslaught first showed up. It feels too stable, too well established. I think he’s been hiding something from everyone for a long time.