The Game of Empires - REVIEW THIS STORY

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

Chapter 21

Finally, she could no longer stand the silence. "Charles..."

Slowly, Charles raised his eyes to look at her warily, as if he were waiting in dismay for her to act on the knowledge she possessed. There was such an air of defeat about him that it frightened her. It was as if he had lost his belief in the X-Men and their ability to triumph over any challenge.

Jean bit her lip, and forced herself to speak. "Charles, you have to tell them the truth--"

Don’t you see? she pleaded with him silently. It’s what we don’t know that’s tearing us apart. The truth is the only thing that can bring us back together.

Scott turned sharply at her words, his expression sliding through surprise into suspicion. "The truth about what?" he demanded, his gaze split equally between Charles and Jean.

Jean watched Charles intently, desperately hoping that he would say something... anything to reassure her that they had not put their trust in him for so many years for naught.

She was disappointed. Slowly, Jean turned to her husband. "The truth about Gambit," she answered him and saw his expression thin. Through their link, she felt a flash of hurt and understood its source. She shook her head in response to his unspoken question.

"Charles told me some... things this morning," she admitted. Privately, she added, About Onslaught, Scott. About why he left me to that monster.

"What kind of things?" Scott wanted to know. Behind him, Rogue was watching the exchange with a look of sick terror on her face. Jean couldn’t begin to guess what she knew, but the possibility of learning something else dreadful about Gambit was obviously frightening to her.

Jean glanced once more at Charles, and this time caught his eye. "I’m going to restore the memories you hid from the original X-Men," she told him with as much fortitude as she could muster, and felt the ripple of shock that ran through the team. "They have the right to those."

Ignoring the flurry of startled questions from the X-Men around them, Charles nodded in agreement, but his expression narrowed. "I was hoping you would be willing to bear with me for more than a couple of hours, Jean." The words were sardonic.

Jean blew out her breath in a sigh, fighting to keep her temper. "So did I, but now Remy knows." She crossed her arms. "There’s no point in not telling the rest of them."

Charles stiffened, his eyes blazing with sudden anger. "How could you possibly know whether there was a point to it or not?" he demanded. "You have no idea what kind of damage it will cause!"

Jean was so startled by the sudden outburst that she backed up a step, but a small part of her was relieved by his reaction. Anything was better than the listless apathy of the past few minutes.

"Then tell me, Charles. Give me a reason."

Charles sank back into his chair and closed his eyes. He looked exhausted and old beyond his years. "What do you want me to say?" He looked back at her with eyes full of pain. "That in my youthful arrogance I thought I knew how to save the world? That I traded my son’s life for a safe path through history? That I thought I could cheat that cost by giving him back what I took away, but now it is impossible and so I have to find some way to live with the fact that I have killed my own son?" His expression hardened into something both cold and sarcastic. "Forgive me, Jean, if I really don’t want to talk about it."

Jean could only stare at him, her thoughts whirling. It didn’t make sense, though his pain was too real, too raw, for her not to believe him.

"I don’t understand."

Charles covered his face with one hand. "Of course not." The hardness drained out of him, leaving only a bitter regret that Jean could taste in the back of mouth. Through the link she shared with her husband, she could feel the bits of information coming together in Scott’s mind and the sudden shocked realization that followed. He turned to look toward where Gambit had disappeared around the side of the house, his surprise clearly visible in his face. Jean followed his gaze for a moment, then turned back to Charles.

"What about Remy?"

Charles looked up at her, a flicker of something gentle appearing in his face and then disappearing almost before she could register it. "Is he all right?"

Jean reached out with her mind, listening for the distressed thoughts she was certain she would find, and when she did find them, she was alarmed.

Once he’d rounded the corner of the house, Remy knees gave out beneath him and he sank to the ground, knotting his fingers in the long, cool grass.

It’s not true. Dis can’ be happening. He was trembling violently and tiny motes of light danced in the darkness that encroached on the edges of his vision. He knew he was dangerously close to blacking out and wondered momentarily why he was fighting it. Unconsciousness would at least banish the pain and confusion for a little while.

But I don’ want t’ be dat much of a coward. The thought startled him, and actually helped to push the darkness back. He was a master at running away, at taking the easy way out, but the prices he’d paid for those escapes were often brutal. He’d learned that lesson with Sinister and then again in Antarctica, and he was beginning to wonder if it wouldn’t be wiser to just accept things up front and get it over with.

With that in mind, he slowly let himself focus on the image of himself and Lilandra reflected in the lake. He tried to take an objective look using his mind rather than his feelings, but he found the two impossible to separate. Yes, there was a resemblance, but there were also a lot of fundamental differences. That didn’t prove anything. Not without a blood test, anyway. The problem was what had happened inside his heart at the moment that he realized what Lilandra was trying to show him. It was as if he’d always had a bunch of feelings floating around inside him-- anchorless, dissociated feelings-- but the moment he’d attached the concept of mother to Lilandra, they’d all suddenly grabbed on. In short, though he could only recall a handful of times in which he’d even been in the same room as the Shi’ar Empress, he suddenly loved her with unwavering confidence. That was what drove all of his arguments and protests away. What his mind could neither encompass not accept, his heart already knew.

But the confusion of loving a complete stranger was nothing compared to the storm of emotions that ripped through him when his thoughts turned to Xavier. Lilandra he could accept-- sort of. She conjured feelings of security, strength and warmth, and though she’d never done anything, as far as he knew, to create those feelings in him, she’d never done anything to hurt him, either. Xavier on the other hand...

Remy’s breath locked in his chest. His vision dimmed to almost nothing under the onslaught of emotions, and he was left scrabbling to hold on to the shredded edges of his consciousness.

Xavier claimed to be Remy’s father and everything inside him rebelled at the thought. It was, strictly speaking, impossible. The Professor wasn’t old enough to be his father. But with the overwhelming certainly in his heart of who Lilandra was, it became impossible to dismiss Xavier’s claim. Of course, that didn’t make any sense either since the two had only known each other for a couple of years-- hardly long enough to have a toddler on their hands, let alone a grown man. But the same emotional association that had happened with Lilandra also applied to the Professor. Out of nowhere, Remy suddenly found himself feeling things that he could find no reason for. There was love, respect, fear, disappointment, hurt and anguish. And on top of the emotions he couldn’t explain he felt bitterly angry and betrayed by the man. How could Xavier have known... and said nothing? Was he that ashamed to admit to having a son like Remy?

Stop that. Jean’s mental voice was firm and cut through his thoughts like a knife.

You in on dis, too? he shot back, not bothering to disguise his resentment. Get out o’ my head.

He could almost see her lips thinning. I am not in your head. You’re projecting. Then her mental voice softened. Charles said that this is some kind of Shi’ar stress reaction.

Shi’ar. Remy’s thoughts spun sickeningly. The doctors had diagnosed it as a panic reaction, but he hadn’t had any trouble with the blackout spells for years. The last time was just after the Massacre, in fact. But to think that the root cause had something to do with him being part Shi’ar...

"Remy, breathe." Hands gripped his shoulders, the touch rekindling his awareness of the world around him. He realized that his lungs burned painfully. After a moment, he regained enough of himself to draw a shuddering breath and the darkness that clouded his vision retreated a step.

"That’s it, just take it easy." Jean’s voice was gentle and reassuring as her grip changed to become something like an embrace.

It ain’ true, Jean. He protested weakly, his fingers knotting in the fabric of her sleeve. Dis can’ be happenin’ t’ me.

Jean sighed. I know, but it is, anyway.

The calm acceptance in her mental voice was like an anchor. Remy clung to that thought as his spatial sense tracked the people who gathered closely around him. His thoughts shied away from Xavier even as he registered his presence only a couple of feet away, and that of Cyclops who had pushed the wheelchair across the lawn. Lilandra stood behind Jean, her arms crossed and her body language stating clearly that the space separating her from the Professor was there intentionally. Ororo trailed a few steps behind Lilandra, but then passed her to kneel beside Jean.

Remy felt the warmth of Ororo’s hands on his back and smelled the familiar musk of her cologne. The sensations were comforting and helped to push the darkness down to a manageable level, but that did nothing to dispel the bitterness inside him.

Cautiously, he opened his eyes, squinting against the bright sunlight, and raised his head to find Ororo and Jean watching him with twin expressions of concern.

"My friend, are you well?" Ororo’s brows were drawn together so that they almost touched. There was deep concern and even a hint of fear in the ice blue eyes.

Remy summoned a flip smile. "Y’ ever sat dere an’ watched y’ entire life shatter an’ de pieces rain down around y’?" he asked hoarsely.

Her expression of fear deepened minutely as she nodded.

Remy felt like his smile had frozen in place, cold and brittle. "Well, dis is about de t’ird time f’ me. Take m’ word, Stormy, it don’ get any easier."

Ororo pressed her lips together in a thin line, then reached out and took Remy’s chin in her hand. She met his gaze intently. "I have told you this before... do NOT call me that."

The old joke, delivered in regal solemnity as only Ororo could manage, snapped Remy’s artifice in two. He barked a laugh that was nearly a sob.

"Remy."

Remy froze at the sound of the Professor’s voice, his breath choking off as a cold hand clamped around his heart. Very slowly, he pulled away from Ororo and turned to look at the man who had brought all this on him.

"How long?" Remy demanded as his anger boiled over. "I been livin’ in dis house f’ t’ree years, an’ y’ never said anyt’ing." He nearly spat the word. "So how long have y’ known?"

Xavier was silent for several long moments, his face completely still save for the indecipherable emotions burning in his eyes. "How long have I known what, Remy?" he finally asked in a strangely gentle voice.

"Dat... dat..." Remy choked on the words that his mind screamed. He knew it was true, with a horrible gut-level certainty that he couldn’t justify. Xavier’s question was a challenge, to see if he believed enough to commit the concept to words.

Fury enveloped him. He wasn’t the one who had lied and hidden things. He wasn’t the one who had known, but hadn’t cared enough to say anything.

Unbidden, Remy’s eyes began to glow. "Not’ing," he bit out.

Xavier’s gaze jerked away from his, and Remy tasted bile. He shook off Jean and Ororo and rose unsteadily to his feet. He had hardly taken a step when a hand closed around his arm with surprising strength. Remy looked down to find the Professor staring at him.

"How long have I known that you are my son?" he asked in a voice that was both fierce and soft. Ororo’s gasp of surprise punctuated the question as Remy’s knees threatened to buckle once more.

Speechless, Remy nodded and Xavier’s eyes narrowed in pain. "Thirteen years, Remy." His expression was ashen. "Thirteen years."

General Gerard Donovan leaned back in his chair and let his eyes sag shut. What a mess.

Three days ago, Project Grayscape was a little-known research project with a well-obscured budget and even better-obscured agenda. Today...

He snorted sourly. Today, Grayscape was a crater in the ground. Luckily, the prototype equipment had already been taken off site for field testing and they’d managed to rescue a number of the psions, so it wasn’t a complete loss. But the damage to the program was daunting. Questions were coming fast and furious now as more information about the destruction of the Arizona installation became available. The White House had already released a statement saying that the blast heard as far away as Las Vegas was the result of a nuclear test, which was earning the administration an overwhelming round of censure from other world leaders. However, that was preferable to admitting that a top secret program aimed at developing psi weapons had been attacked by two separate mutant groups and a spaceship possibly representing a third and non-human interest.

Donovan opened his eyes and leaned forward abruptly, his gaze focusing on the grainy black-and-white photographs spread across his desk. Satellite photos were hardly the best for this kind of thing, but at least they gave him an idea of what had happened. Originally, the base had been attacked by the large mutant group. At least, their experts thought they were mutants. The leader most certainly was. He had been tentatively identified as one so-called Erik the Red, which was interesting since they had absolutely zero information on Erik’s real identity. Intel rumor was that he was originally a persona invented by one of the X-Men almost eight years ago, but which had been revived on occasion by a number of different people.

The rest of the attacking forces led by Erik the Red were surprisingly homogeneous for a mutant strike force. They had identified two basic "types", the large cats and the bipedals, which had already been dubbed "Ed" by the majority of the staff because of their alarming resemblance to a movie character named Edward Scissorhands. The evidence pointed to these forces being some kind of mutate or other created mutant population. They had several bodies of the Ed type for the lab folks to go over, but the cats appeared to disintegrate at death. He would be very interested to hear what the doctors concluded once they’d had a chance to study the bodies.

The second group to arrive on the scene appeared to be a small contingent of X-Men. That was disturbing in and of itself because the X-Men had been sniffing around Project Grayscape for several months, though Donovan had been assured that they were no where close to finding anything concrete. Obviously, that assumption was incorrect, and three of the mutant outlaws had shown up very soon after the fireworks started. They were accompanied by two other mutants, both of whom were currently unidentified. Donovan was somewhat surprised that the group was so small. The X-Men behaved like a pack, and when one or more of their members was besieged, the rest tended to show up quickly.

It was possible that the spaceship was supposed to fill that backup role. It hadn’t uncloaked until it was well into the atmosphere, and had obviously been targeting Erik the Red’s mutant force rather than the X-Men. The data was sketchy at best, but their current hypothesis was that the ship had crashed because of something the mystery mutant Erik had done to it. It was too precisely targeted to take out the base or possibly the X-Men, to have been an accident.

The phone rang, shattering his introspection. Donovan picked it up with a grunt.

"Yes?"

"Sir, this is Captain Towler. I’m down in the Spectral Analysis lab. I think we’ve got something here you should see."

Donovan agreed curtly and then hauled himself out of his chair. He found he had to dig out a map of the Pentagon to figure out where the Spectral Analysis lab was, but about fifteen minutes later he was walking through the high-tech tangle of computing equipment and lab paraphernalia.

Captain Towler motioned him over to one of the computer stations where a young man in a lab coat was seated at the keyboard. The large monitor displayed a picture that Donovan recognized from his desk, but the satellite photo was barely visible beneath several layers of wavy colored blotches that radiated away from the fuzzy dot that was Erik the Red.

"What is this?" Donovan asked the Captain.

"It’s an analysis of the radiant energy aura of Erik the Red," answered the young tech and Donovan pinned him with a cold stare for his impertinence.

"Sir," Towler said quickly, "the satellite that took the pictures you saw was one of our Voodoo IV spy birds, which is equipped with a full spectrum sensor package. We downloaded all of the data at the same time as the photo images, but it has taken this long to process it." He gestured toward the odd picture on the screen. "But what we discovered is... rather... amazing." He paused. "Even disturbing."

That caught Donovan’s attention. Towler wasn’t the kind to get spooked by mutant shenanigans. "So what am I looking at here?"

Towler turned to the tech. "Let’s start from the beginning and layer it up, just like you showed me."

The tech nodded. "O.k." He tapped a few keys and the colors disappeared from the screen, leaving only the satellite photo image. Then he glanced up at Donovan.

"General, this is one of the pictures recorded by the satellite. Everything I’m going to put on top of it was recorded at the same time. Each layer of colors represents a different kind of energy that Erik was throwing out."

Donovan nodded and the man typed a command, which covered the pictures in multiple shades of blue, green and purple. Erik’s figure was fairly glowing with a vibrant purple color that faded into blues and greens in an uneven star-like pattern as it spread out away from him. On the edge of the photo was a second figure that was highlighted with a star of colors, though this one was mostly blue.

"All right," the tech said, pointing to Erik. "This is the psi energy filter, and Erik here reads almost off the scale."

"Level 20," Towler interjected and Donovan turned to look at him, his stomach tightening.

"Are you sure?"

"That’s what the purple means, sir."

Donovan turned back to the screen. "Then who’s this?" He tapped the blue star.

"That’s the X-Man Phoenix. She’s estimated to be a 17 or so-- high alpha mutant. This Erik is definitely Omega class."

Donovan chewed on his lip, thoughts spinning. "Is there any way this could be Xavier?" he finally asked.

Towler shook his head. "No, sir. Xavier was definitely still in the complex when Erik attacked, and some of the photos suggest that he was one of the prisoners Erik took with him when he teleported out." Towler paused significantly. "However, it is interesting that you should mention Xavier."

"Why?"

Towler shook his head. "Let’s finish this first. It should become obvious."

Uncertain what to think of the cryptic statement, Donovan turned his attention back to the image on the computer. The tech typed a few more commands, and a second layer of color was laid on top of the blue and purple one. The result was a poor mesh of hues that reminded him of nothing so much as a child’s fingerpainting. The second layer of color appeared to be in shades of orange, yellow and brown, and as he stared the patterns began to emerge. This time, the figure of Erik was the sole generator of this particular type of energy.

The tech finished on the keyboard. "This second filter is an EM-- electro-magnetic-- filter. The yellow represents the normal EM field for this particular part of the planet under these atmospheric conditions. The darker the shade is, the greater the deviation from the norm."

Donovan peered at the screen. Erik was, indeed, surrounded by a dark bubble that would seem to indicate that he was manipulating the planet’s magnetic field. The conclusion Donovan drew from that was not entirely unexpected.

"Magneto?" After all, there had never been any proof of the man’s death.

Towler pursed his lips. "Maybe. Probably, even, but that’s not all there is."

Frowning, Donovan crossed his arms. The tech typed new commands, and this time, the overlay was a kind of black squiggle that looked for all the world like someone had taken a charcoal pencil and scrawled on the screen. Somehow, though, the jagged black lines managed to convey a sense of menace that Donovan was at a loss to explain. He cocked an eyebrow at the tech in silent question.

The tech looked down at the keyboard. "This is what we’ve been calling the empath band. It’s a variety of psi energy that seems to affect emotion rather than conscious or even unconscious thought."

"Is the black signifcant?"

The tech nodded. "Different emotions are generated in different places in the brain, and have different ‘frequencies’ if you want to call them that. This filter assigns a different color to each one."

Donovan felt a small lump of unease forming in his stomach. "And the black is?"

The tech glanced up at him uncertainly. "It’s fear, sir."

Donovan found himself relaxing slightly. "So Erik was projecting fear during the attack?"

Towler shook his head. "No, General. We think he was absorbing it."

Donovan looked between Towler and the young tech, gauging their expressions. "So what’s the bad news here?" he finally asked. There was definitely something the two were leading up to.

The tech turned back to his computer and began typing. "This last filter is just an attempt to extrapolate the data we have and create a kind of standard energy signature for Erik." The image was redrawn and Donovan could see where the colors had been muted or slightly rearranged.

"So this is Erik the Red." Under the tech’s rapid typing, the screen split into two panes, with the picture of Erik occupying the left half. "Now, take a look at this one."

A second image appeared on the right, and Donovan was immediately struck by the similarity between the two colored auras. The second image was not a satellite picture but rather a conventional photo, taken at great distance through a telephoto lens. The mad collection of colors obscured any details of the man’s appearance, but given the quality, Donovan didn’t think he’d be able to make out the man’s features even without them.

"This is another picture of Erik?" Donovan asked with a gesture toward the second picture.

Slowly, Towler shook his head. "No, sir. That’s Onslaught."

For a moment, Donovan was so startled he forgot to breathe.

"Are you saying that you think this Erik the Red is actually Onslaught?" he demanded once his lungs resumed functioning.

Towler shrugged, but the tech shook his head. "There are enough differences between these signatures that they could potentially be two different entities." The tech gave Donovan an uncomfortable look. "But I’ve got to admit that they’re close enough to give me a serious case of the shivers."

Donovan stared at the screen with a growing sense of dismay. This could not possibly be Onslaught. Everything they’d heard said that Onslaught had been destroyed during the battle in New York. Donovan bit his lip. But no matter who he was, Erik the Red was a threat that his superiors needed to know about.