Dreamweaver: Part Nine
He stood in the blue area of the moon, in the middle of a raging psi-storm. Golden tendrils of psionic energy lashed the beautiful alien structures that Logan had seen for the first time when he and the rest of the X-Men had fought the Imperial Guard for Phoenix's life. Many of the buildings had already collapsed under the assault. The city was dying. If this battle had taken place on Earth--Logan didn't even want to think about the consequences.
He could feel every hair on his body standing straight up. Maybe Lila was right, and it wasn't such a hot idea to teleport in here, he thought, wincing as the ground shook beneath his feet. But he'd decided to take a chance on one of Landau, Luckman and Lake's portals, which were a little more stable than anything Lila could manage. He'd gotten here in one piece, but staying that way--
"Watch it!" snapped the person beside him as an elaborate stone column exploded a short distance away. Logan instinctively ducked, knowing he couldn't move fast enough to avoid the razor-sharp shrapnel, but at the last possible moment, it bounced off an invisible forcefield that spat blue sparks at the contact.
"Thanks, Zoe," he said gratefully, turning to face L, L & L's slender blonde expeditor. Zoe Culloden wore a set, grim expression as she nodded at him brusquely. She'd been reluctant when Logan had asked her to take him through one of the portals to the Moon, but for once, she hadn't tried to get any concessions from him in return. He'd thought he'd have had to sign away his life for a favor like this--
"Don't thank me yet, Logan," she said darkly. "You may soon wish that you hadn't asked me to bring you here." He raised an eyebrow, but she shook her head, a warning look in her eyes. He let it go; he was more than used to Zoe's enigmatic warnings after all these years. "The old palace of the Inhumans isn't far," she continued. "Apocalypse has been using it as a base since just after the battle with Onslaught. That's where Cable was taken, and where we need to be."
They hurried towards the enormous building that Zoe indicated. It was clearly at the center of the disturbance, psi-energy emanating from it like reverse lightning. As they drew closer, Logan could feel it picking at him uncertainly, as if it wasn't sure whether to class him as friend or foe. Zoe seemed undisturbed by it, but then again, Logan had never been sure how--tangible she was at any given time.
"I'm assuming by all this--" he gestured around at the psi-storm as they ran, "that Apocalypse didn't manage to make Cable into his host."
Zoe gave him a faint, unamused smile. "It was impossible from the start," she said bluntly. Logan's eyes widened. "I know. I almost feel sorry for Apocalypse, deluding himself for all these centuries. He wasn't able to overwhelm Cable's mind when he was an infant, and he certainly can't defeat a dual consciousness when both personalities hate him so fiercely." She snorted. "Never thought you'd be glad that he's still carrying around part of Stryfe in the back of his head, did you?"
Logan didn't rise to her bait; he had more important things to worry about. "So Nate can beat him?" he asked urgently.
"I didn't say that," Zoe muttered. "It's--up in the air at the moment."
He didn't like to hear that. Not from someone who was supposed to know the pattern of events to come. But it was good to hear that he wasn't going to be faced with the sight of Apocalypse walking around in Nate's body, with access to his enormous psi-abilities and the power of the Phoenix. Logan shuddered at the thought. I'm being enough of a fool as it is, walking in here on my own.
He wished he could have the Phoenix standing before him, by itself in a human form. There was nothing he'd like to do better than throttle--him, her, it, whatever. It had nearly destroyed Jean and Rachel, and now it was trying its best to get Nathan killed. He growled deep in his throat, remembering Sam's face as he told Jean and Scott about what had happened. The poor kid had been in tears, thinking that it was his fault. Logan wished there'd been a chance to talk to him, to remind him that it had been Cable's choice to trade himself for Cannonball when Sam had been captured by the Horsemen.
But Zoe had been insistent. We go now, she'd said, or it doesn't matter if we go at all.
Another enigmatic comment that he'd prefer not to decipher, Logan decided. They had reached the palace, and ran up a ramp that shuddered alarmingly into the main part of the complex.
Most of the ceiling was gone, and from the way the whole building was shaking, the walls would follow in the near future. Logan and Zoe made their way through wide, rubble-strewn halls. There were bodies here and there, servitors and even Dark Riders who had been felled by falling stonework. The intricate, vivid frescoes that depicted the history of the Inhumans were coming apart at the tremors. Logan glanced at them as he and Zoe passed, unaccountably saddened by the loss.
The distortion grew fiercer as they approached the center of the palace, and as they emerged into the great chamber that had once been the gathering place where the Inhumans had sat in convocation since leaving Earth so long ago, Logan saw the source of the storm.
Apocalypse had pushed his mass-shifting powers to their farthest extent. He was like some Titan out of Greek legend, his head brushing the ceiling, two hundred feet above the floor. His whole body glowed with a ruddy light. But the towering External was dwarfed, insignificant beside the Phoenix-effect that surrounded Cable.
"Holy shit," Logan whispered. The two of them were just standing there, staring at each other. He had no idea what level this battle was being fought on, and he wasn't so sure that he wanted to know. He asked anyways. "Zoe, what is this?"
When she didn't answer, he looked down at her, shocked to see how pale she'd gone. "Zoe?" The look in her eyes was almost entranced, as if she were an oracle staring straight into the future.
"Five thousand years ago the world took one road," she said softly. "Now it's got a chance to take another, if Cable's strong enough."
"Oh, that helps--"
She snapped out of her daze and gave him a haughty look. "Fine, you want the long version? We're looking at the mother of all nexus points, Logan. The continuum is a chaotic system. Even the smallest change has wide-reaching effects. But this--no matter how it turns out, it will change everything, Logan. Nothing will be the same. Nothing."
Logan watched the silent battle, feeling utterly helpless. The tremors were muted here, and there seemed to be very little structural damage to this part of the building. Like the calm at the heart of a storm, he thought, and was suddenly assailed by the image of Nate sitting at a table, a island of serenity in the middle of chaos. People screaming, running out of the diner to the dubious safety of a rainy night--
The diner, he thought, his eyes narrowing. Wait a minute--
"Don't you start," Zoe said, sounding exasperated. "Do you know how hard it is to hold this together when you fight it like that? No wonder the poor kid's exhausted."
He whirled and looked at her in astonishment. She raised an eyebrow. "What," she said with an ironic laugh, "you thought Rachel could pull this off without help? Even with your cute little dreamweaver? Dickensian object lessons that take place outside the space-time continuum don't come cheap, you know." She raised a hand, and something sparkled on her palm.
Logan blinked, wondering why he was staring at Zoe. She gave him an unreadable look, but as she glanced away, her eyes widened with shock.
"Logan!" She pointed over his shoulder, and he turned to see someone creeping up behind Cable. Nathan, totally absorbed in the struggle with Apocalypse, didn't seem to notice.
"NATE!" Logan roared, starting forward. The moment seemed to stretch out endlessly, into infinity--
But it was too late. It had been too late from the beginning. At a distance of about ten feet, the hunch-backed figure tensed and leapt, slamming into Cable from behind. There was a sickening crack as Cable fell to the floor. The Phoenix-effect vanished, winking out like a streetlight at dawn. The Dark Rider somersaulted back to his feet and hurriedly scuttled out of the way as Apocalypse gave a roar of triumph and lifted one enormous foot to crush Cable.
The foot came down, and hit a hastily erected telekinetic shield. Inside the shield, Cable tried to get up and failed, falling back to the ground again. Apocalypse, losing his balance, started to topple. As he fell, he shrunk rapidly, and when he hit the ground, he was down to a mere fifteen feet or so.
Logan saw Cable's shield shimmer and fade. Nathan didn't move. Logan, ignoring a protest from Zoe, raced across the chamber to him and turned him over gently.
"Nate?" he asked desperately. "How bad are you hurt?"
Cable stared up at him in bewilderment. He was as white as a sheet, clearly in agony and obviously going into shock. "Logan--I c-can't move my legs--"
Something clamped down on the back of Logan's neck. Apocalypse lifted him off the ground, studying him curiously for a moment.
"Fool," the External said with some contempt, and hurled him away easily. The impact stunned Logan for a long moment. By the time he had struggled back to his feet with Zoe's help, Apocalypse had lifted Cable into the air by the throat, and was regarding him with an expression almost of regret.
"Ignominous, isn't it?" he asked in that thunderous voice. "All your life spent preparing for this moment, only to fail. The shame of it must be eating you alive, Dayspring."
#Not--the one--to be talking--about shame--# Nathan managed telepathically. #Call this--survival of the f-fittest?#
Looking bored, Apocalypse tightened his grip. Nathan's whole body shuddered, and his eyes rolled up into his head as he started to lose consciousness. Logan growled and started forward in desperation. He had no chance, he knew, but he might be able to distract the bastard for just a moment--
He couldn't move. "Zoe!" he grated through curiously numb lips.
"You can't interfere," she said sharply. "This isn't your fight, Logan."
"Why the hell did you bring me, then?" he almost screamed.
"Not yet," she answered, and said nothing more.
Apocalypse was laughing. "So helpless, in the end, for all that power. All that undying, unyielding determination," he mocked. "Do you feel death approaching, Askani'son? You've cheated it for so long. How it must gall you to know that you'll soon be languishing in the hell reserved for failures of nature, for the unfit--" Crimson light flared around him. "Die, then," he gloated. "Die, knowing that what you will suffer is nothing compared to what I will do to this world you fought to protect. Only through conflict can the fit be revealed. Your precious dream dies with you, Dayspring. I will create a hell on earth--"
Suddenly, Nathan opened his eyes and glared at Apocalypse. #You're so--pumped--about hell--old man--so why don't--YOU go there--#
He stretched out a shaking hand towards Apocalypse. A sphere of light, perhaps the size of a golf ball, shot from his hand. The External stiffened for a moment as it hit the front of his armor, leaving a tiny charred spot.
"That's all?" Apocalypse demanded incredulously. "After all this, that's the best you can--" He fell silent, and a look of horror crossed his distorted features. "No--" he breathed. "NO!" He flung Cable away with terrible force. Nathan hit the floor hard, and didn't move.
Apocalypse loosed a single shriek of wrath as the Phoenix sprang to life and he literally exploded from the inside out.
The release of energy knocked Logan to the floor. He lay there for a long moment as power howled all around him, its cry of rage fading to desperation and finally planitive denial, before fading forever.
Logan got slowly to his feet, feeling his healing factor beginning to kick in. Zoe, who had apparently been unaffected, stood silently, staring up at the stars where the ceiling had been. Logan gave her a single, disgusted look, and went to Cable's side. He checked him quickly for injuries, and realized with a sinking heart that his guess had been right: the Dark Rider's attack had shattered Cable's spine. His breathing was labored, his pulse weak and unsteady, and blood coursed from a deep head wound. And there was something else wrong, something that went beyond the physical. Nathan seemed disturbingly insubstantial, as if he was fading away as Logan watched.
"He's dying," Logan said hoarsely as Zoe joined him. "Zoe, you've got to get that portal open. I have to get him back to the mansion--"
Zoe glanced upwards, and shook her head. "No time." In the distance, Logan heard something that sounded almost like thunder. Thunder on the moon?
Instincts he hadn't felt since he'd gone feral flared off all at once. Outside the walls of the palace, the rumbling sound came again, growing louder and shaking the ground.
"What the hell is it?" he asked.
"Chaos," Zoe said cryptically. She stood and hurried towards a mass of equipment on the other side of the room, returning after a minute with a piece of strange technology, a glowing cylinder connected by wires to two curved bands. She snapped one of the bands around Nathan's arm, and then looked up at Logan.
"We can't let him die."
"NO SHIT, ZOE!"
"He can't die," she continued in a very level voice, but there was something odd in her eyes, an expression closer to pain that anything he'd ever seen there before. "Not when Apocalypse is dead. One of them has to exist, or the world can't." Tears shimmered in her eyes suddenly, and Logan's jaw nearly hit the floor. Zoe? Crying? "Cable has to take his place, Logan. That's the way it was meant to be. One powerful mutant, shaping the direction the world takes, whether brutally, like Apocalypse, or in--subtler ways."
"But Apocalypse was immortal," Logan said dully as he felt Nathan's body shudder with pain.
"And Nathan isn't," Zoe finished quietly. "Why are you surprised?
"Sam--"
"Wasn't here," she said inexorably. "And wasn't meant to be here, not this time. He's Cable's successor, Logan, not a substitute."
What the hell am I doing? Logan thought dazedly. There was too much at stake here to be arguing about this. "Zoe, you just gave yourself the best reason in the world to open that goddamned portal!"
"I can't." she said simply, and extended the other armband. Logan stared at it for a moment.
"What is it?" he asked, although he suspected. All of Zoe's cryptic comments, her unwillingness to bring him here--it was falling into place, piece by piece.
"Part of what Apocalypse used to try and transfer his essence into Cable's body. I've modified it; it can transfer psionic energy now, that's all." She looked very intently at Logan. "You can use it to restore what he lost when he used his inherited Phoenix-energy to kill Apocalypse. You have to do it, Logan. I would do it myself, but I'm not really here."
Logan met her eyes, understanding at last. Thank God I did come alone, he thought wearily. Jeanie would never have let me do this. "Zoe," he said, his voice rough. "Let the X- Men know what happened, all right? Tell them that I--tell them I'll always be with them." She nodded slowly, and he swallowed. "Tell Nathan it was my choice--don't let him beat himself up over it. And tell--tell Jean--"
"I will, Logan," she said softly. "I promise."
He reached for the armband. But as he touched it, the whole world shattered around him, as if it were a stained glass window that someone had just put a fist through.
What's going on? Where am I? He spun into the blackness, memories of the three alternate futures he'd been shown tangled up with those from the diner and the forest and the cabin.
Logan! Regina suddenly cried out in the endless silence. Logan, it's Andrew, he's coming for me! You have to help us!
Then, colors exploded around him. Sight and sound came back, and as he opened his eyes, he found himself in the ruins of the cabin. Back in the real world.
to be continued...
alicia's stories | [ARCHIVE] | comicfic.net