X-Men: Dark Mirror (5 page)

"Pessimist."

Kurt smiled. "Come, let us go and see if we can learn something new about this place."

So they walked, peering out windows where they saw barbed wire and chain-link fences; sliding doors with security checks and metal detectors; more nurses' stations surrounded in glass, where the walls were soft blue and cream.

The nurses and security guards put their backs to the walls when they passed; they did it subtly, without overt gestures of fear, but Scott felt it. Even little Mindy, who seemed to have a reputation of good behavior, fell under the same hospital safety procedure.

Don't turn your back, don't let down your guard.

They found the window where the patients got their meds, and some of those men and women were already lined up, waiting: trembling, shaking, muttering obscenities under their breath while rubbing their arms so hard, so fast, skin turned red. When the nurse at the window appeared with plastic cups of medicine and water, the entire line pressed forward, hungry.

Scott and Kurt walked away, fast, before anyone noticed them just standing there and forced something down their throats. Their fears were not unfounded; they passed men tied down in wheelchairs, struggling as nurses roughly pushed pills into their mouths.

"They do not separate the sexes here," Kurt pointed out. "I find that odd, and I must admit, dangerous."

"Maybe they only mix during the day. Or perhaps the patients don't have a record for sexual violence. That, or the men have been chemically castrated."

"Scott."

"Oh, um. Sorry."

Kurt coughed, glancing down at himself. "And Jeff? You said you were going to check on him. I forgot to ask you."

"There were too many people around his room for me to break in. I looked through the window, though. He's still unconscious." "Still?"

"I was in there last night. I picked the lock on my door and took a look around. Our Jeff, whoever he is, got in a fight with the nurses."

"Could it be Logan?"

"Maybe." Hopefully not Jean. He was not sure he could handle his wife looking like a man. A chemically castrated man, at that. Logan, on the other hand ...

"You're smiling," Kurt said. "Care to share?"

"Not particularly," Scott said. "Take me to Maguire's office."

Kurt led Scott down narrow halls into the most distant part of the first-floor wing. They passed only one nurse, and she had a familiar face.

"Well, isn't this cute." Nurse Palmer placed her back against the wall. "What are the two of you doing down here?"

"Going to see if the doctor is back," Kurt said, while Scott stared at the floor, demure as a little doll. "We miss him."

"He's not there, honey," she said.

"We miss him," Kurt said, with a wonderful whine in his voice that made him sound like a twelve-year-old boy. "Can we at least go wait by his door?"

She hesitated, and then sighed. "Sure, Renny. You and Mindy go wait for him. Stay out of trouble, though. I don't want to hear any stories."

"Of course," he murmured, and she shot him a hard look. Scott held his breath, but all she did was stand beside them, waiting, and he realized that she was not willing to turn her back on them.

Scott nudged Kurt and they shuffled down the hall, listening hard to the quiet as Nurse Palmer watched them leave. Only when they neared the end of the corridor did Scott hear footsteps. He glanced over his shoulder and saw Nurse Palmer disappear around a bend in the hall.

"Why do I feel as though that was a close call?" Kurt murmured.

"Because it was," Scott said, resisting the urge to run. He thought about Rogue and Jean and Logan, and knew they did not have much time at all, not if they wanted to remain together.

Maguire's office was at the end of the hall. There were two other offices besides his, but Scott and Kurt listened at the doors and heard nothing. Either everyone was on vacation, or the doctors only came in on certain days of the week.

Scott pulled the lock pick from his underwear, which made Kurt laugh. He unlocked the door and the two of them entered a small dark room where the air smelled like paper, coffee grounds, and the hint of something floral, like roses.

The desk faced the door. It had a neat surface, with small piles of files in one corner, and a tiny lamp in the other. The walls were bare—no books, no paintings, nothing at all that was personal. An antiquated computer sat on a small table; a close examination showed dust on the keyboard.

Kurt thumbed through the files. "There are only five people here. Guess who?"

Scott grunted. He was too short to peer over Kurt's shoulder, so he scooted the man aside and grabbed some paperwork.

"Mindy Chan," he read out loud. "Suffers from a debilitating social disorder, which manifests as ..."

"As what?" Kurt asked absently, reading his own chart.

"I can't function in normal society and I don't talk. Ever. But I think I already knew that."

"How terrifying for her to be in this place, then." He flipped some pages. "My full name is Renfield Brooks, and according to this, I suffer from high anxiety brought on by acute agoraphobia."

"Being here must have been a nightmare for him."

Kurt shook his head. "I cannot imagine anyone voluntarily checking themselves into this institute."

"It doesn't have to be voluntary." Scott read through the rest of his file. "This makes mention of some improvements during private therapy sessions, but it doesn't say anything that would help us. No indication that Maguire was prepping Mindy for... I don't know what."

"Stealing souls, maybe?"

"That's a little dramatic."

"Really? And what about waking up naked in a body that is not your own, in a mental hospital where you are occasionally strangled by women and their bras?"

'That's just strange and unusual," Scott said. "Do we have an address and phone number for Maguire? Do we even have a phone?"

He searched the desk and found a wire leading to a partially closed drawer. Bingo. If he could contact the Mansion and only convince someone to listen to him ...

He dialed one first, which was a mistake because even as he began punching the rest of the number he heard a voice on the other end say, "Hello, this is the nursing station. Hello, who is this? Is this—wait—is there someone in—"

Scott hung up the phone, cursing himself. "We better get out of here. Right now."

"I've got his address," Kurt said, tearing off a page from the top file. He patted the folders back into a presentable pile, and then the two of them left the office at a fast walk. Moments later, Scott heard voices. There was no place to hide.

Scott grabbed Kurt's arm and pulled him back down the hall to the office next to Maguire's. His fingers slipped on the lock pick, but then the wire went in and the door clicked open. He shoved Kurt into the room and followed close behind, shutting the door just as he heard men round the bend at the end of the hall. Quiet, holding his breath, he locked the door.

"Sheila said the call came from Maguire's office." A deep voice, loud and irritated. Kurt sat on the floor behind the desk. Scott joined him. They listened to wood rattle.

"The door's locked."

"Open it up, anyway. Sheila usually doesn't make mistakes."

Scott listened to keys jangle, the harsh sound of heavy breathing. The insulation was so poor he could hear the men shuffling around through the walls.

'There's no one here."

"Yeah, I can see that. Bonnie said she talked to two of his patients on her way upstairs. They came down here to wait on him."

"Heh. How long did you say the doctor was going to be gone?"

"Don't know. Maybe a couple weeks. I can't remember if he really said. He left yesterday, though."

"That's a long wait Those sad asses must have gotten tired or something. Hey, you think he would miss that lamp?"

"Right, you're funny."

The men left and did not stop to check the other offices. Scott sighed. His stomach hurt and he had sweat rolling from the creases beneath his breasts. Every movement acted as a reminder of what he was missing.

They crept back into the hall, listening for anyone else who might have the inclination or power to lock them up for trespassing. Everything was quiet, except for some distant screams that seemed more like pleas to God than angry statements of defiance.

As they left the office corridor, Scott heard the soft hiss of rubbing cloth, the crinkle of paper. It was too late to hide. They rounded the corner and came face-to-face with a short slim man wearing a white lab coat He had black thinning hair and a pair of spectacles perched on the end of his nose. He gave Scott and Kurt the once-over and smiled coldly.

"Can't get enough of your resident genius, huh?"

Scott, quite certain that the man was a doctor and that Mindy should not talk in front of him, stayed silent. Kurt, after a moment of confusion, adopted a pathetic whine and said, "We were just waiting for him to come back."

The doctor, astonishingly enough, mimicked him and sneered. "I can't imagine what he saw in you five, spending all his time trying to make you better. Like some god requiring sacrifice, and the hospital let him get away with it. Can you imagine? All it did was increase the workload on the rest of us while miserable discontents like yourself pandered to him like little virgin sacrifices." He stopped to catch his breath and looked at Scott. "I heard from the nurses that you talked today. Congratulations."

And then he pushed passed them and disappeared around the bend in the hall.

"Did any of that make sense to you?" Scott wiped stray MD spittle from his cheeks.

"Only the last. I sense much anger in his heart."

"I sense the need for some of that medication he's prescribing."

Kurt smiled. "We learned something, though. Or at least, he affirmed what has been implied. The five of us— or rather, our bodies—were Maguire's pets."

"And pets," Scott mused out loud, "are sometimes trained for a specific purpose."

"What is ours?" Kurt asked.

"I don't know," Scott said, "but I hope it's a good one."

They put Rogue in the quiet room with Patty, which would have been a luckier break than it was, had her cellmate actually been awake and not drooling. Rogue did not know why they would risk putting someone potentially unstable—a woman who had just killed a man with her fists—inside the same room as another unconscious patient, but apparently Patty was a sacrifice they were willing to make in the interests of not giving Crazy Jane access to weapon-making materials such as dresser drawers and bed frames and sheets. Oh, the danger.

They put her in a straitjacket, though, which was bad enough. Then again, they probably would have left her in a straitjacket in her own room, which made her wonder if Jane had very talented feet, the way they'd gone on about her making things to terrorize them with.

"We'd knock you out, but the administrator is going to want a word with you. We need you lucid enough for that conversation. After that? Lights out, baby." The security guard seemed especially cheerful. Rogue thought about giving in to the temptation to bite his ankles, but decided that was one more mark against her that she really did not need. She thought his socks looked dirty, too.

Which was all a fine distraction, because when they finally left her and closed the door, she did not have any excuse but to think about the man she had just killed. Rogue had taken lives before, but it never got easier and this time was worse because it was so useless, such an accident, with no real purpose. Yes, she had been trying to save a man's life, but the man who had been doing the killing was sick, insane. He might not have had true control over his actions. And she . . . she had slammed his head into the floor under the misguided and arrogant belief that as a human woman she would not be strong enough to kill him with a blow.

Self-important, conceited, overconfident . . . maybe that was the real Rogue, the woman who could fly and bench press two tons, whose invulnerable skin could steal the powers and memories of any living thing on the planet. Yeah, that might be her.

It's not so easy being normal.

What a joke.

She looked at Patty, who lay on her side, facing Rogue. She appeared short and was definitely soft, with a round face, freckles, and fine golden hair that fell around her chin. Young, cute as a button, and wrapped up so tight in her straitjacket, Rogue thought she resembled an overstuffed marshmallow.

Jean,
Rogue thought.
Jean has to be in there.

Awkward in her straitjacket, she scooted closer to Patty, studying the slack face for anything familiar, some ghost of her friend. With Scott and Kurt it had been easy; their mannerisms and odd little idiosyncrasies were just as clearly identifiable as the faces they had been born with.

But there was nothing special about Patty. Unconsciousness could be blamed, perhaps, but what if it was more than that? Perhaps not all of them had been transferred to new bodies. If their team had been attacked— and it certainly seemed that way, with a clearly definable loser—was it possible that Jean and Logan had escaped?

If anyone could, it would be those two.
Rogue hoped so. She leaned a little closer for a better look.

Without warning. Patty transformed from a marsh- mallow to a viper, flinging herself at Rogue with teeth flashing: a little doll gone rabid. Rogue gasped, rolling backward, barely snatching her foot away before Patty latched on to it with her mouth.