The Vault - REVIEW THIS STORY

Written by NicoPony
Last updated: 08/15/2007 08:57:57 AM

Chapter 10

Jean awoke to several loud bursts from a klaxon. The repetitive buzz was followed by the calls of the guards, who were making their way down the corridor, knocking on the cell bars with their nightsticks. Jean sat up groggily and pulled back her blanket. It was damp. Her clothes were damp. The floor, when she lowered her feet to it, was also damp. The air was humid and uncomfortable. The nearby toilet reeked. Apparently, the sewage system wasn’t functioning well.

She groaned, set her elbows on her knees and rubbed her face with both hands. Jean couldn’t recall a time when she felt more miserable. She hadn’t had anything to eat in nearly two days. Her body ached from laying prone on her stomach for several arduous hours. She had hardly slept at all. Sometime in the night, an earthquake had shaken her from her bed. From Moxie’s description, she didn’t imagine things would improve. As a ’drudge,’ she was expected to put in several hours hard labor. There was a small beacon of hope, however. During the work hours, she would be able to use her mutant powers to aid in the construction. Cerebro would be able to detect her mutant signature as soon as the inhibitor was turned off. Perhaps she might even risk contacting the Professor telepathically. She had no idea how far she was from home, and no idea how far she could push her powers.

“Out of your bunks!” commanded the black-haired guard as she passed Jean’s cell.

Moxie leapt down from her bunk and stretched. Betsy stood as well. Jean stumbled over to the sink and turned on the tap. The water ran yellow and tasted earthy and green, like sprouts. She drank it in large gulps, then splashed her face and pushed back her hair.

Her hair! Jean groaned again. The locks of bright red hair, once her best feature, had seemingly gone into shock. Her hair flipped out at the ends. The humidity had caused it to inflate to mammoth proportions. It was just as well there was no mirror in the cell. She imagined she looked like an extra from the musical Hairspray...or Carrot Top.

“Here, you can borrow my comb,” Betsy said sympathetically, handing her a cheap plastic comb, like the kind dispensed before having school pictures taken.

Jean took the little comb from Betsy and tried to rake it through her hair, but it was no use. Moxie handed Jean a rubber band without comment. Jean thought she spied the feline mutant smiling a little. Jean watched enviously as Betsy pulled the comb effortlessly through her pin-straight hair. They weren’t allowed to have regular hairbrushes or toothbrushes in their cells. Toothbrushes were permitted at the end of the day, during the half-hour they were allowed in the communal showers. Moxie had explained the ins and outs of the operation last night, for which Jean was grateful. Moxie seemed to be the only one who knew what was going on around here. She wasn’t forthcoming with information about herself, but Jean imagined Moxie must have been here from the start.

The cell doors slid open with a thunderous rumble that echoed down the hall. Girls filed from the open doors and Jean joined the flow of bodies. They cleared a check-point and proceeded single-file into a larger hall floored with linoleum tile. The hall led to a set of double doors and beyond that a cafeteria. There were several racks holding trays in the center of the room, and everyone proceeded with unnatural silence toward the food. Jean’s mouth watered and her stomach clenched, even though the food didn’t look or smell particularly palatable. Food had all ready been portioned out into the sections on the tray. Jean slid a tray from a slot on the rack and was about to turn and follow Moxie when she spotted Remy. The male prisoners were filing in through another set of doors. Jean loitered near the rack of trays while other girls took their food and milled around her.

She felt Remy’s eyes on her as he proceeded across the room. When he was near enough for Jean to see his expression of concern, she felt her composure slip. Maybe it was partially due to the bone-aching tiredness or the stress, but seeing something familiar in this horrible place reminded her of the desolation she had been trying to ignore. Her face crumpled, and she bit back a sob.

“Jeannie,” Remy hissed. “Don’t cry. Stop it!”

“Remy,” she said tremulously, “I don’t---I---.”

“What right’ve you got to go on blubbering,” he snapped. Jean was so shocked by his sudden shift in mood, her tears stopped instantly. His eyes had been filled with sympathy, now they were angry. “It’s all your fault we’re in this mess!” he continued. “You’ve wrecked everything for me, taken away my one chance at a normal life!”

Jean’s jaw dropped. “My fault?” she asked incredulously. “Do you think I wanted this to happen!?”

She was about to continue when Moxie appeared at her elbow. “Don’t talk to him,” Moxie told her. “We don’t talk to the liners.”

Jean shook her head, dumbfounded. She was so angry with Remy, she didn’t bother to ask Moxie any questions. She followed Moxie to a nearby table where several gray-garbed mutants sat. Betsy was no where to be seen. Jean sat and ate in furious silence. She hadn’t realized she’d finished until her spoon hit the bottom of her empty bowl. She wasn’t entirely sure what she had eaten either.

“Do you know him?” Moxie asked eventually. “That boy you were yelling at?”

Jean wiped her hands on a paper napkin, wadded it, and threw it into her empty bowl. “Yes,” she replied snappishly. “We go to school together.”

“Breakin’ rocks in the hot sun! I fought the law, and the...law won!” someone sang. Jean’s breakfast curdled in her stomach. Jean knew that voice, that accent. She turned to see the mutant known as Pyro sauntering toward her table. “I needed money, ’cause I had none!...I fought the law, and the----hey, Red!”

Jean’s shoulders hunched. People were turning to stare.

“Red, hey Red! Funny I should see you here! Oh, too rich. Prom queen Jean, here in prison!” Pyro cackled hysterically. “Oy, I almost didn’t recognize you,” he blathered as he took a seat across from Jean and Moxie, squashing the other two occupants at the table. “Love the new do!”

“Tone it down, Allerdyce,” Moxie said. “It’s too early.”

“Never too early for me! Rise with the sun, I do!” he beamed at Jean. “So what’re ya in for, Red? Were you a naughty girl? Do tell!” He banged his elbows down onto the table and propped his chin on the heels of his hands.

Moxie shook her head. “It doesn’t matter anyway, John. They’ll take one of us in for anything. Betsy was an au pair, and got taken in because there was a problem with her permit. We’ve all been royally screwed because of the wording in that stupid law. They’ve got permission to detain any suspected mutant until the nature of their mutation is assessed.”

“Listen to her,” Pyro told the others at the table, while jerking his thumb at Moxie. “The frickin’ Encyclopedia Britannica.”

“Quiet, John,” Moxie said in an undertone.

“Aw, let me razz the newbie a bit more.”

Moxie surreptitiously pointed to something over Pyro’s shoulder. The black-haired guard was fast approaching. Pyro tilted his head back to look at her.

“’Ello, Arclight!” he said. “Y’know, I never noticed it before, but from this angle, I see your five o’clock shadow is darker than mine!”

Arclight glowered down at him, then seized him by the neck and hurled him across the room. Pyro squawked and slid several feet along the tiled floor. This didn’t seem to be an unusual event, because it garnered little interest amongst the other inmates. Jean gaped at Arclight. No one human could’ve thrown Pyro with such minimal effort. The guards were mutants!

“Grey!” Arclight barked.

Jean looked at the guard, hating her. “Yeah?”

Arclight smirked at her. Pyro was right, the guard had a distinct mustache. “You’re assigned to Squad Three. Pick up your boots in the prep area.” With that, Arclight stalked off.

Pyro had climbed to his feet and had wobbled back to the table. “Squad Three?” he exclaimed, sticking his face between Jean and Moxie. “Why, that’s our squad!” He clamped a hand down on both their shoulders. “This is gonna be so much fun!”

Jean squeezed her eyes shut. This was going to be a long day.

Squad Three was made up of four other mutants besides Jean and Moxie. There was St. John, who until now, Jean had only known as Pyro. Being imprisoned hadn’t altered him at all. Jean couldn’t tell if he was insane or simply had an unusual sense of humor. In any case, he probably needed to be medicated.

Moxie introduced Jean to two other female inmates, Lorna and Joanna. Lorna seemed a nervous girl. She had very curly green hair. She was experiencing the same problems with humidity as Jean, and kept self-consciously pushing down her curls. Moxie warned Jean that both Lorna and Joanna reacted badly to any kind of stress. Lorna would dissolve into tears, whereas Joanna would react in anger. Joanna was a woman of Amazonian proportions. She stood over six feet tall, with dark brown skin and her hair in cornrows. When John suggested that her irritability was due to “woman troubles,” Joanna hurled a wheelbarrow some thirty yards into the jungle. The look she gave John indicated that he would be next.

The last of their squad was Guido Carosella. He was heavily muscled to the point of disfigurement. Jean had a hard time believing he was only fourteen, but the thick, blue plastic-rimmed glasses and the braces helped. Guido had an encyclopedic knowledge of the Star Wars movies, and could recite an entire scene from start to finish. He did this often to distract himself from the obvious unpleasantness of his situation.

Their squad was monitored by one of the male guards. John called him “Cocksucker,” though Jean doubted that was his real name. He was holding a two-way radio. His small piggish eyes looked over the squad. “Okay, we’re ready here,” he said into the radio. “You can reset the inhibitors now.”

Jean looked at the manacle on her right wrist. Slowly, the power bar began to decrease. Jean felt the first inkling of other minds around her. Her hope diminished a bit when the power bar failed to decrease beyond the yellow level. Moxie’s had turned completely off, as had Pyro’s.

“You two,” barked the guard, pointing at Pyro and Moxie. “Start clearing brush.”

“With what?” Pyro snarked. “You want I should rub a coupla sticks together?”

The guard tossed Pyro a disposable Bic lighter. Pyro held it up for examination, displeasure written all over his face. Moxie picked up a flat-edged shovel. “I suppose I’ll have to haul this by hand,” she said to no one in particular, “since I no longer have a wheelbarrow.”

Joanna looked abashed.

“Cargill! Carosella!” the guard continued. “Start mixing that cement! You two, start setting the rebar!” He gestured to the large rectangular trench before them. The trench had been walled with concrete, but the bottom was filled with stinking mud. Jean had no idea how to go about setting rebar.

“In a grid,” Lorna told Jean, “like this.” She gestured and several poles of reinforcement bar lifted into the air. She worked with some strain. Her inhibitor had also been set to half-power like Jean’s. Jean aided Lorna in the heavy lifting, and the pair set the bars in place. Where the bars crossed, they had to twist a shorter bar at the joint to hold them in place. Though they weren’t working with their hands, the labor was still difficult. They were both sweating after twenty minutes.

Jean didn’t envy Moxie or Pyro, who were literally beating back the jungle. Moxie worked tirelessly, but Pyro occasionally took breaks to heckle the guard who was growing angrier by the minute. After several threats, Pyro would return to incinerating brush, and Moxie shoveling up the residue. They glanced furtively into the trees.

According to Moxie, the jungle was alive. Not just growing, but sentient. Jean couldn’t see how that was possible. There was no fence around the compound however. Moxie said inmates who ran into the jungle were never seen again. That didn’t stop Jean from contemplating the possibility of escape.

Pushing her telepathy to the point of pain, Jean whispered: “Professor Xavier, where are you?”