Triptych, page 13
part #3 of Marvel Xavier's Institute Series
She and Fantomex had both been welcomed at the school, at least as far as she knew. That meant Cyclops must trust them, as far as that went.
She didn’t see any better options, so, reluctantly, she crawled out from under the SUV and stood on legs that were trembling. “Over here,” she said, her voice strained and quiet. She thought there was no way the woman could have heard her, but the footsteps paused, and E.V.A. doubled back down the row to join her.
“I’m glad you’re safe,” the woman said, laying a hand on Avery’s arm. “We need to get out of here quickly.”
A loud, shrill siren cut off any reply Avery might have made. Ducking behind the SUV, they risked a glance through the back windows of the vehicle. At the top of the exit ramp, an armored military vehicle was pulling in, blocking the way out.
“I was hoping to avoid this,” E.V.A. said, her forehead creased in worry. Taking Avery’s arm, she pointed to the opposite end of the parking garage, where another ramp led up to an exit on the south side of the street. “When I give the signal, run as fast as you can toward that exit.”
Avery doubted her injured ankle and shaking legs could carry her far, but she nodded. There was no other choice. “What’s the signal?”
“This.” E.V.A. turned and lifted her hands. Her right arm elongated and hardened, shifting into a scythe-like weapon from her shoulder down. Her left arm began to glow with energy, a brilliant ball of amber light gathering between her fingertips that she hurled at the oncoming armored car.
Avery turned and ran.
Behind her, there was a loud boom as the energy blast hit the side of the car. Avery risked a glance over her shoulder and saw E.V.A. follow up the strike with a swing of the scythe in a wide arc that tore the entire front end off the car and left a nasty, jagged gash in the windshield. The driver and passenger spilled out and took cover behind the rear bumper, but E.V.A. was done with them, it seemed, and she’d done enough. Armor or not, the car wouldn’t be going anywhere. She began running after Avery, who turned her attention back to the exit.
A cold knot of dread settled in her stomach. Two more police cars were approaching, their lights flashing, sirens wailing.
She wasn’t going to make it. Her ankle throbbed, she was weighted down by bags, and she was limping more than running. They were going to cut her off.
Panicked, Avery glanced back. E.V.A. was coming full speed ahead. If Avery hadn’t been so frightened, she would have been deeply impressed to see the woman running all out in a business casual suit and two-inch heels with a scythe for an arm. But she wasn’t going to make it out either.
And then the woman jumped, drawing her knees up to her chest. For an instant, time slowed, or maybe the woman simply defied the laws of gravity. Whatever was happening, Avery had never seen anything like it. E.V.A.’s body pulled in on itself, the scythe shrinking and reforming rapidly into a spherical mass of metal surrounded by spinning rings with spindly, insect-like legs.
No, not legs, Avery thought, but a kind of landing platform. The woman had transformed into a flying saucer.
And she was now moving very, very fast.
A hysterical laugh bubbled up in Avery’s throat, but she didn’t have time to lose it like she wanted to. E.V.A.’s voice rang out in the parking garage, amplified and deep. Becoming a ship must do that to you.
“Turn around and jump!”
Seriously?
Avery stopped, turned, and saw a doorway slide open in the sphere, just like in all the movies she’d ever seen about aliens and flying saucers. The ship was barreling right for her, ready to scoop her up.
Well, it was the military on one side or… this. Summoning her courage, Avery waited until the ship was almost on top of her.
She jumped.
The ship took her, smooth as silk, into its interior, though the landing left something to be desired. Avery banged her shoulder on a hard metal surface, landing with her bags wedged between her hip and the floor. Quickly, she rolled off the painting and sat up, hoping it hadn’t been damaged. The door in the side of the ship slid shut and blended seamlessly with the wall.
Trapped now. Wherever they were going, Avery was along for the ride whether she liked it or not.
Don’t panic. Don’t panic.
“For your safety, it would be best if you came up front and strapped into one of the cockpit chairs,” E.V.A.’s voice, tight but calm, echoed through the ship. “We’re going to have a bit of a bumpy journey getting out of here.”
At that moment, something large and heavy slammed into the side of the ship, throwing Avery to the floor again.
“You call that bumpy?” she yelled.
“Apologies.”
Scrambling up on all fours, she crawled to the front of the ship and threw herself into the center chair, which was flanked on either side by a pair of control panels and some kind of VR unit that looked almost… organic. Avery shuddered and focused on strapping the laptop bag into the chair next to her and then securing herself.
Not a moment too soon. The ship tilted sharply, throwing her against the harness and knocking the breath from her body.
“What’s going on?” Avery shouted when she managed to suck air back into her lungs. “What’s hitting us?” She gestured wildly to the blank wall in front of them. “Put it on the main viewer or something!”
“This is not a science fiction television program,” E.V.A. said dryly. But, in a fair imitation of one, the metal wall in front of Avery peeled back, revealing a bank of darkly tinted windows that gave a panoramic view of the outside.
Avery was sorry she’d asked.
They’d cleared the parking garage, but in front of them was a wall of armored vehicles and a pair of Sentinels. Avery had seen news footage of the robots – mutant hunters. They were even more frightening up close. Very close. One of them had grabbed onto the ship and was trying to yank it out of the air. E.V.A. maneuvered frantically to try to break its grip.
“Weapons systems locked,” E.V.A. said, and a burst of amber energy erupted from the ship, filling the windows with a blinding glow that had Avery throwing up an arm in front of her face. When she could see again, hope surged within her.
The Sentinel had been blown backward, crushing one of the military vehicles beneath its weight.
“Nice!” Avery shouted, punching the air with her fist. Wait, was she actually enjoying this a teeny bit?
“Hold on!”
Before Avery could react, the ship surged straight upward, leaving her stomach behind. Cold sweat broke out on her forehead and neck. Nope, she’d changed her mind. She definitely hated this. Clamping her lips together, she squeezed her eyes shut, praying to the gastrointestinal gods that she wouldn’t throw up, and praying to anyone who would listen that they wouldn’t be blown out of the sky.
Nothing happened. The shuddering sensation in the ship eased as they leveled out, and her stomach steadied with it.
She risked opening her eyes a crack. They were flying high above the city now, and the museum was a speck of gray metal and glass below. But before Avery could be suitably relieved to be out of reach of the scary robots, the ship was turning, angling back toward the ground. No no no. Avery didn’t want to go back down there. She wanted to stay up here where it was safe and smooth and there was no one trying to kill them. “Where are we going?” she asked.
“We have to get Fantomex,” E.V.A. said.
She groaned, hoping E.V.A. wouldn’t hear her. “Where is he?”
“I have a visual.”
Avery leaned forward to look. Below them, the museum’s sculpture garden spread out like a maze, the statues and installations covered in a light blanket of snow.
Right in the middle of that peaceful scene it looked like someone had taken a huge shovel and scraped it across the ground, tearing up the landscape and knocking over three of the modern art sculptures.
Anger flooded Avery. She gripped the arms of her chair. “Don’t they even care about what they’re destroying? I thought your friend was supposed to love culture and art?”
“He does,” E.V.A. said, and even amidst the tension Avery recognized the edge of worry and sadness in her voice. “But he’s never had to fight this kind of battle before. He can’t prevent the collateral damage, and I’m not entirely sure he can win, no matter how hard he tries.”
Chapter Fourteen
A less confident man might say he was losing this battle.
The fleeting thought passed through Fantomex’s mind as he tumbled across the snow-covered grass, fetching up against the base of a large statue of a human hand rising from the ground, fingers splayed, as if reaching to pluck something out of the sky.
Fantomex pushed himself to his feet as Weapon XIII stalked toward him, stealing a precious few seconds to take stock. He was bleeding from at least three serious wounds, one of them a gunshot to the calf, but he was fairly certain the bullet had passed cleanly through, so he could hold himself up a little bit longer.
The military and the Sentinels were another matter, but, luckily or unluckily, depending on how you wanted to look at it, Weapon XIII had noticed them as well and thrown a misdirection that had two of the Sentinels turning on their masters. Now a group of soldiers and robots were tied up in a pitched battle near the museum’s south loading dock. There was another battle going on near the parking garage, which, if he had to guess, was what was delaying E.V.A. from coming to rescue him from this fight, which had devolved into a punishing bout of hand-to-hand combat.
Ah, here comes some more punishment.
Fantomex surged forward, landing a satisfying upper cut that snapped Weapon XIII’s head to the side, but he was too tired to follow it up and just took that opportunity to breathe. A fire burned in his lungs.
“What’s so important… about… it?” he gasped, trying to distract his single-minded enemy. “The painting? Why are you… and Cluster… after it?”
And why was it a time bomb set to go off at the whim of a college student? So many questions, but it was getting increasingly difficult to concentrate – or care – about any of the answers. He really needed to rest. Or fall unconscious.
Weapon XIII, predictably, said nothing. He hadn’t said anything since he’d demanded the painting from them. He wiped the blood out of his eyes and did a spinning kick so fast Fantomex barely had time to register the movement before it connected with his solar plexus. His back hit the statue of the hand, and with a loud crack the sculpture split, falling to the ground in a spray of snow and dirt.
Fantomex fell with it, and he knew he was done. All the helpless rage in the world wasn’t going to get him back on his feet. Either Weapon XIII was going to try to parley with him for the painting again, or he was going to kill him.
A spray of energy blasts tore up the ground around Weapon XIII, two of them catching him in the back. He screamed and fell to his knees, giving Fantomex enough hope and energy to pull himself up on shaking legs as E.V.A. glided fast toward him, the ship hovering inches above the ground. A doorway in the sphere slid open, and he dove inside.
He felt them rising into the air, fast and smooth, away from the museum and the city. Or at least he assumed they were. He couldn’t move or even lift his head to look out the wall of windows off to his right.
After a moment, he was dimly aware that someone crouched before him. He cracked an eye open. Avery hovered over him, examining his wounds.
“He’s bleeding a lot,” she said, directing the statement to E.V.A. “Do you have any first aid onboard this… er, I mean, you?”
He reached up with a trembling hand and took hold of Avery’s wrist. She looked down at him in surprise.
“Let her concentrate… on flying,” he said. He pointed Avery in the direction of a metal cabinet attached to the back wall of the ship. “In there.”
She nodded and went where he pointed, opening the sliding door to reveal a kit of bandages, gauze, disinfectant, and other first aid supplies. After a moment of indecision, she brought everything back and scattered it on the floor beside him.
He helped her as best he could, grabbing the gauze and pressing it against the wound at his hip while she worked on the one at his calf.
“Can you go into a healing trance?” E.V.A. asked. “It will be some time before we reach the school.”
“I don’t think so,” he said roughly. He was teetering on the edge of unconsciousness as it was. If he tried to relax and enter a meditative state, he might pass out instead. Much as he hated to admit it, he needed Christopher Muse’s help, just like last time, in order to repair himself. He’d lost too much of his healing ability in the separation.
He gritted his teeth against the pain. Would he always be forced to rely on other people now? People who might abandon him at the first sign of trouble?
It was very possible that that circumstance had already happened. Once they returned to the Institute and Cyclops and Emma Frost learned what had transpired at the museum.
Assuming they didn’t already know, of course.
He groaned.
“Am I hurting you?” Avery asked, her brows drawn tightly together. Her hands where they were pressed over the wound at his calf were trembling. He knew he should have thanked her for her aid, but as his gaze fell on the laptop bag sitting on one of the cockpit chairs nearby, the scene in the museum lobby rushed back to him.
If Avery Torres hadn’t swooped in with her righteous anger and a painting that she’d somehow transformed into a Cubist thermal detonator, they might have made it out of the museum without any fuss or damage. Instead he was bleeding out on the floor of the ship, and his pride had taken a number of blows it might never recover from.
“You,” he said, using his most intimidating tone, but it came out so faint that it lacked any punch. “We need to have a discussion.”
•••
As it turned out, he wasn’t the only one who wanted to have a nice long chat punctuated by some yelling. As soon as they arrived back at the Institute and E.V.A. and Avery helped him to the infirmary, Cyclops descended upon them in all his ruby-eyed wrath, with Triage trailing behind and looking as if he wanted to be anywhere but here.
“What did you think you were doing?” Scott ranted, as Fantomex shifted his body onto the examining table so the young healer could take a look at his leg, which seemed at the moment to be the biggest concern and the greatest source of blood loss. “Minus Avery, your faces are on the Edmonton news, amateur footage of your battle is all over social media, and I’m fairly certain S.H.I.E.L.D. is having meetings right now to decide how best to deal with the problem.” He jabbed a finger at Fantomex. “If they decide it’s worth sending a unit sniffing around up here, it puts us in an incredibly dangerous position. This is everything I was trying to avoid!”
Maybe his bellowing would have had a greater impact on the students, but Fantomex was more affected by the shooting pain in his leg as Christopher manipulated it into position to start his healing process. “I highly doubt Weapon XIII cared whether or not he exposed this place,” Fantomex growled. “He would have come for the painting, likely in the same very public fashion, whether we had been there or not. But if we’d gone with Emma Frost’s plan of securing it, we’d be sitting on our hands watching news footage of his theft right now.”
And they’d be no closer to figuring out why Cluster – and now Weapon XIII – were stealing these artifacts. Although he had a pretty good idea it was tied somehow to Avery’s strange reaction with the Alano painting.
Speaking of which…
He gestured at Avery, who had been trying to sidle quietly out the door while they were arguing, the laptop bag slung over her shoulder. “Not so fast,” he snapped, causing her to freeze in place and turn to glare at him. “Don’t look at me like that. Perhaps you’d like to share with all of us just what’s going on with you and that painting you’re trying to sneak out of here.”
All eyes in the room, even Christopher’s, swung to Avery, but instead of shrinking under the attention, she raised her chin slightly in defiance. “I was only trying to protect the painting from you,” she said. She shot an accusing glance at Cyclops. “I didn’t know they were stealing it on your orders.”
“He wasn’t following anyone’s orders, and it’s a lot more complicated than that,” Cyclops said. He glanced between the two of them. “What exactly did happen at the museum, and how did Avery get involved?”
Judging by the stubborn set to her expression, Avery wasn’t going to be volunteering to lead the retelling of their daring exploits, so Fantomex launched into the story, leaving nothing out and putting particular emphasis on the moment when Avery had interfered in their attempt at a clean escape, somehow transforming the painting into a bomb.
When he’d finished, Cyclops stood tense, thinking. Triage was focused on his healing, but even he seemed unsettled. And Avery, despite her defiance, was unable to hide the fear in her eyes.
Fantomex felt a stab of regret. He’d taken his frustration out at her expense, but he hadn’t meant to make her feel afraid. Here among the X-Men was probably the last place she would face rejection, but if she was new here, she couldn’t be expected to know that.
She spoke before he could try to reassure her. “I didn’t make the painting do whatever it was it did,” she said, then, biting her lip, “at least not on purpose.”
“We know that,” Cyclops said, his voice gentling. “So let me try to understand. When you met with Professor Xavier all those years ago–” his jaw tightened, but whatever emotion he felt was gone so quickly, Fantomex thought he must have imagined it “–he thought you had psychometry powers, but he never saw you do anything like this. Is that right?”
She shifted uneasily. Hesitating for an instant, she pulled the laptop bag around to unzip the zipper. Carefully, she lifted out the painting. There was a hairline crack in the top of the frame, but otherwise it was undamaged. Fantomex was impressed she’d been able to keep it so protected during their escape from the museum.
