She looked very small, sitting at the table in the War Room...a small, slightly stocky anachronism with grubby overalls and messy blonde pigtails. Her eyes were fastened on the table.
"Annie," Scott said gently, resting a hand tentatively on her back. "I know it's hard for you to talk about this, but we want to help. If people are killing mutant children, we need to know. We need to be able to help them."
"We know you have no reason to trust us," Jean seconded, sitting on the other side of Scott. "But please, can you try?"
Annie's eyes inched up, and she looked around the table. "You won't like it," she whispered.
"We're getting used to that," Jean said a bit grimly.
"All right," she said, straightening up and lifting her chin determinedly. "I'll tell you."
"Thank you," Scott murmured.
She swallowed hard. "My name is A-99," she said evenly. "But my handlers called me Viola. I'm unit ninety-nine of 124, A-series."
"What?" someone said involuntarily. She ignored them.
"I was an experiment," she continued bleakly. "We all were. To make tame mutants, whose powers would be known before they came into existence. Controlled mutants. Weapons." She blinked once, then continued. "I was...they thought I was a failure. But in a good way. Defective, they said. Fast, strong, powerful, but mentally defective." She took a deep breath. "I wanted them think that."
"Why?" Scott asked gently, cold with horror.
"Because I was afraid. If they knew how smart I was, they'd have killed me, like they killed the others." Her blue eyes darkened, suddenly seeming almost black. "The first cull happened when we were six months old. Ninety-eight left. The second, when we were two. Seventy-two left. The third, when we were five. Thirty-six left. The fourth, when we were seven. Eighteen left. The fifth, when we were ten. Seven left." She looked up. "We reached puberty when we were twelve and a half. The other six were culled five months ago."
"My god," Jean whispered in horror. She looked up, to meet the Professor's eyes. "That can't...how could they do this?"
"Far too easily, I suspect," Professor Xavier said. His voice was calm, but his hooded eyes were very cold. "How did you escape, Annie?"
She looked at him, her small face bleak. "They were going to keep me," she explained. "I was mentally defective, you see, so they didn't think I was a threat to them. They were done with the A-series, but they wanted to keep one around. Just in case."
"When they killed the others...one of them, Chase, was a telepath. When he died, I felt it. He told me to run." She tilted up her chin, giving them all challenging look. "I killed my handlers," she said flatly. "And the ones who killed my sibs. Then I ran away. They'd trained me well...even they couldn't find me, once I was gone."
She could hear the shock...the fluctuation in a heartbeat, the indrawn breath...to her ears, it was as if they'd spoken aloud. "They killed one hundred and twenty-three children, from infants to adolescents. Do you think I should feel remorse? I don't."
"That is understandable," the Professor admitted. "If not laudable. And then you fled?"
Annie nodded. "I had to learn the world," she said simply. "I knew seventy-nine ways to kill someone with a blunt object the length of my hand, but not what pizza is. Every capital of every nation this world has ever known, but not how to use chopsticks. I wasn't supposed to be operational. They just used me to crack codes and stuff."
"You were at a disadvantage," Jean observed quietly. "Is that why you came here?"
"Yes. I knew about you." She shrugged. "They knew too. They have no plans to interfere at this point."
Xavier's eyes sparked. "And when DO they plan to interfere?"
"I don't know. But not any time soon, so don't worry." She lifted her chin, meeting his eyes with a flinty gaze. "I plan to have gotten rid of them by then."
And that was all she would say.
Eventually, Scott shooed the others away, taking her to a spare room. He didn't think it would be a good idea for her to have to deal with curious roommates. "If you want something, call, okay?"
She nodded, and he patted her shoulder awkwardly and left.
Annie waited until he'd gone downstairs, sitting silently in the middle of the bed. Then, slowly, she stood up, moving to lock the door. There was a mirror hanging on the wall, and she looked into it.
Slowly, her curly blonde hair thickened and lengthened. Her cheekbones became more prominent, as did her chin. Her nose lengthened from a cute button to a Grecian straight line from her forehead. And her soft blue eyes turned bright yellow, from lid to lid.
She lifted a small hand, now a little larger and weighted with heavy dark claws, and looked at it.
Maybe she should have told them the rest? About Jamie and Janice, who looked so much like Wolverine that he still startled her when she looked around. About Chase, who could have BEEN Xavier were it not for forty years, the tattoo, and the earring. And about herself, who SHE was derived from...but no, better not. She really couldn't predict how they'd react to that, and she wasn't quite ready to be rid of them yet.
Not quite.
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"I dunno," Logan said doubtfully, when Scott had rejoined the others. "I mean, she was tellin' the truth, I could tell that much--"
"So could I," Xavier agreed, steepling his fingers and resting them against his chin. "But I sensed that she wasn't telling us everything."
Jean nodded. "I got the feeling it was personal," she said a bit doubtfully. "Was that right, professor?"
"Yes, quite right," he agreed, eyes distant. "She told us what happened, but no personal details, about herself or about the...the other children."
"It's hard to believe that something like that could happen." Storm's voice was soft, and she bit her lip unhappily. "Those poor children...some of them were only babies."
"She said that they were all killed," Scott said quietly. "But what if she was wrong? We have no way of knowing if there was more than one group, or if that installation was the only one. We don't even know who did it."
There was a moment of horrified silence.
"Scott's right," Jean said slowly. "She said that they were 'finished with the A series.' Not that there wasn't a B series...maybe several."
"Heck, Annie's at least thirteen. They could have a whole damn alphabet by now," Logan growled. "We gotta stop this. It's bad enough pulling this crap on adults, but on kids..." He trailed off, rubbing his thumb absently over the back of his hand.
Xavier nodded. "Scott, I want you to talk to Annie. See if she knows any names, anything that can help us. Jean, start sounding out your contacts. All this would have required a substantial amount of medical intervention; someone must know something. Logan, I know you have contacts of your own..."
"I'll put out some feelers," Logan agreed. "See what I can see."
Xavier nodded. "Storm, please, come with me. I'm going to use Cerebro, on the off chance that I can find something. A large group of mutant children should be easy to find. So easy, in fact, that I should have found them a long time ago."
"Shielded?" Jean asked.
"Almost certainly." Xavier sighed. "But I will try."
Jean nodded, and turned to leave. Scott took her arm gently, shooting Logan a brief, smug look, and Logan sneered at him. Ororo shook her head as she watched them go. "Whatever there is to know, we will learn it," she said softly. "You must believe that, Professor."
The Professor gazed at his steepled fingers, and his jaw tightened. "One hundred and twenty-three children dead...I can't imagine how it must feel to be the only survivor of such a massacre."
"You could tell Magneto about it," she said quietly.
Xavier looked up, blinking. "Ororo, I hardly think telling Erik that over one hundred mutant children have been callously murdered is going to make him less hostile to humanity."
"No. But it might convince him that he's not the only one who has suffered."
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Scott joined his beautiful red-haired doctor in the computer lab as she hit her third mailing list. "Hey, pretty lady," he said softly.
She tilted her head back to smile up at him. "Hey, hot stuff," she murmured. "How did you do?"
"I got a few details," he sighed. "She remembers a logo, shaped like a stylized A and T intertwined. No names of anyone still alive, but she knows that a lot of them were Russian...could be an international company. Not government, though. No soldiers, no military, just research."
Jean nodded. "That's something to work with." He kissed the top of her head, and she smiled. "What're you going to do?"
"I thought I'd see what I can do with the logo," he said, sitting down at the computer next to hers. "Let you focus on the other stuff."
Jean smiled at him. "Thanks, love."
He reached out to take her hand for a moment, squeezing gently. "Anytime.
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After three days, Scott put his foot down. Annie had been alternating between being questioned and locking herself in the spare room the entire time, and, he asserted, she needed some time off. Danger or no danger.
In no time at all, Annie, Scott, and Rogue were heading for the station in Scott's very nice, shiny
car. It wasn't his bike (which didn't seat three people, no matter how much they liked each other), but it was still a reasonably cool mode of transport.
"Are we gonna take the train?" Rogue asked uncertainly.
Scott nodded. "I thought we'd drop the car at the station, and catch a train into the city," he explained. "I know you're worried, Rogue, but it's going to be fine." He gave her a reassuring look in the rear-view mirror.
Rogue nodded, patting Annie's hand gently. The younger girl had been very quiet for the last few days, except for when she practiced on her saxophone...which was actually sounding much better, lately. "You'll like the Natural History Museum," she said encouragingly. "It's got all...nature stuff."
Annie brightened ever so slightly. "Displays? With the little written-down bit on the thing outside?" she asked hopefully. For someone with so cavalier an attitude towards culture, she liked museums an awful lot, Rogue thought. They seemed to come under the heading of "educational," which for Annie meant the same thing as "very entertaining thing about which I will argue a lot with everyone and be right, nyah."
Scott listened to the two girls talking quietly and worried. He'd never really gotten close to Rogue, but he knew that the idea of being pursued by a mysterious group of people who killed mutant children would panic her, if she found out. And he WAS close to Annie, or as close as anyone ever got, and she was acting strangely. Quieter, cooler, less brash and inquisitive and more calculating. Not that he blamed her, but still...it was worrying.
They reached the station, and this time it was Annie who took Rogue's hand comfortingly. She'd heard a bit about what had happened here last time, and she and Scott flanked Rogue automatically. They bought tickets, and headed out to wait for the next train.
"I've never ridden on a passenger train before," Annie said, with a spark of her old interest. "I was on a not-passenger one once, though. It had all these bales of wool in one of the carriages. It smelled funny, but it was cosy."
Rogue nodded, relaxing a little bit. "I did that a couple times, too," she agreed. "Only no wool-bales. Mine were always boxes. Good for hiding behind, though."
Scott nodded too. "I tried that once," he said, surprisingly. "When I was fifteen." He grinned his oddly rakish grin. "I got caught, though."
"Amateur," Annie sniffed, grinning back at him.
"I know. I only got one station along before the guard found me." Scott shrugged. "That was how the Professor found me, though, so it wasn't all bad."
The girls nodded. "Happy ending," Rogue smiled shyly, and he returned the smile. They were good kids, he thought fondly.
On the other side of the platform, a tall, muscular blond man in a heavy coat and a pulled-down hat lifted his head sharply. There was a familiar scent in the air...two of them in fact...laced with something else, something enticingly almost-familiar...
Unobtrusively, Annie sniffed the air. She could smell a strange scent...only just, the breeze was against her...but it was definitely an interesting one. It was one she wanted to find out about. Maybe she'd fight with it, maybe she wouldn't. But she wanted to find it.
Sabretooth scanned the opposite platform, eyes narrowed. He wasn't sure why he'd come...maybe to pick a fight, maybe just to throw a scare into them first...but he'd been bored, and he wanted to beat Wolverine up some. Maybe kill him, but not too soon. That wasn't any fun. And now he was looking for...something. It wasn't exactly across from him, more to the left...
There was Redeye, all right...and the stripy-haired girl was there, too. The familiar scents, yes...but where was the other one?
Annie scowled at the large woman who was standing in front of her. Damnit, she couldn't see where the interesting smell was coming from! It smelled even more interesting than Wolverine, and he was downright fascinating. She'd never met a person who smelled so much like a wolf before. Anyway...nimbly, she scampered around Scott and up one of the decorative wrought-iron pillars that were spaced out along the platform. Hanging from it like a small blonde monkey, she looked around. This was better, she could see everything now...
A flash of movement caught Sabretooth's eye, and he looked up at the small, sturdy kid that'd appeared apparently out of nowhere to scramble up a pillar. Blonde hair, fair skin, overalls...nothing special, just another brat...
Then their eyes met, with an almost audible thunk.
He knew who she was, he just knew... He wasn't sure if it was the look in her eyes or the way she moved or the scent he'd finally placed...but she was his, he knew it! There was just something calling to him, and he started looking around for somewhere he could cross the tracks, to get over there and find out what was going on...
Annie stared at the tall man. She had an advantage, in that she knew at least who he must be...but the shock of recognition had come as a complete surprise. She'd seen Mystique, once, and the woman had looked right in her eyes and neither of them had felt a thing...Annie had only known at all because she'd caught the scent and seen a flash of gold in the eyes as they passed over her. But this...she scrambled down from the pillar and made a beeline for the tracks. She could just run right across, it'd take one second...
Scott grabbed her by the collar as she zipped past. "Hold it!" he said automatically. "Where do you think you're going?"
Annie blinked, trying to refocus on something besides the pack-urge that was tugging at her. "I was just...uh..."
"Well, it'll have to wait." Scott pointed. "This is our train."
Annie suppressed a yowl of disappointment as the train pulled in between the two platforms.
Sabretooth suppressed an angry roar as a train pulled in between the two platforms.
Annie whimpered silently in protest as she was hustled onto the train. How was she going to find HIM again if people went around pushing her onto public transport!? But if she protested she'd blow her cover and HIS too...
Victor Creed snarled silently and grabbed the nearest commuter. "Where's that train goin'?" he demanded.
"N-New York," the woman stammered.
He pushed her away...not too hard...and stalked down the platform. If he remembered correctly, there should be another one in just under an hour...
Part 6
