"Any last words, rebel?"
Jessica Wilson ignored the taunt, as she ignored the damp coldness of the brick wall she'd been thrown against. She continued her quiet recitation of the Shema , with more feeling than usual, for today, she knew she would die.
To her left, her mother-in-law turned a defiant glare on their enemy. "Nothing you shouldn't already know, Gyrich," Adeline Kane spat. "You're going down, your whole corrupt government, and killing us won't stop that. It won't even slow it."
"Yes, yes, I've heard it all before," Gyrich replied absently, turning away from his prisoners to shout another series of orders to his men. Behind them, Kane Manor was in flames, its destruction being filmed for later use in government propaganda.
As their executions would be.
Jessica shivered, but only with the cold, not with fear. Very shortly now, she would be reunited with most, if not all, of her family. Her young children had been murdered over a year ago, her husband abducted and enslaved by the mutant-hating government that presently controlled the United States. She could only hope he had not survived long in the Hound kennels; most Hounds didn't.
'Rose and her family escaped,' Adeline signed to her while Gyrich was preoccupied. 'Emil managed to teleport them to safety.'
'Where?' Jessica asked, not that it would make any difference.
'Gotham City Resistance Post, of course.'
Jessica smiled. The Graysons would take good care of them. 'Of course.'
"Ahab," Gyrich called as the Hound Master approached with three of his black-clad charges. "Find anything?"
Ahab nodded, handing one of the Hound's leashes to the National Security Advisor. "X2H did a fine hunting job; he remembered all the potential hiding places here. We flushed out a couple of rebels, but they chose to go down shooting."
Gyrich patted the Hound's head absently. "Good boy, X2H. Good Hound." He turned his attention back to Ahab. "See anything here you need?"
Ahab shook his head. "Unfortunately, no. And with the Hound turnover rate as high as it is, we definitely need new members in the pack. But there weren't any candidates here."
Gyrich's reply was cut off as Hound X2H bolted away from him, pulling him off-balance as the leash stretched taught. "What the hell --? Hound! Heel!" Gyrich tugged on the leash, but was uncharacteristically ignored. He turned to Ahab in search of an explanation.
Ahab shrugged. "You wanted him here because he remembered the house. Did you think he wouldn't also remember its occupants?" He handed the other two Hounds to Gyrich in exchange for X2H. Using his cybernetically-enhanced strength, he grabbed the errant Hound by the collar and lifted him into the air. "Disobeyal merits punishment, Hound," he growled, throwing X2H to the ground and placing one foot on his neck. Casually, he reached for the whip coiled at his hip.
Jessica frowned as she watched Ahab discipline the Hound. That was no way to treat an animal, much less a human being. But then, that was the root of the problem -- Ahab and his kind didn't view mutants as human beings.
She almost intervened, then thought the better of it. The beating the Hound was now enduring would doubtless be made far worse, just to spite her, if she protested the abuse. Still, it made her feel like an accomplice to the crime to stand by and do nothing. She offered all she had: a heartfelt prayer.
For as much as it was worth. None of her other prayers, numerous though they were, had helped the situation.
Gyrich was selecting soldiers from his battalion; those picked began walking toward Jessica and Adeline. Her stomach tightened; their time was up. Adeline squeezed her hand in quiet reassurance and she smiled briefly at her mother-in-law. She wasn't afraid to die, but that didn't mean she was eager for it.
Someone was watching her, staring at her with an intensity that sparked her awareness. She turned, scanning the crowd of government officials; no one's attention was on her. The reporters were checking their comm-links, the soldiers readying their weapons and laughing with one another. Gyrich had handed the other two Hounds back to Ahab and was barking orders to his troops once again.
The Hound. The one Ahab had punished, now crouching submissively at his master's feet. She, who of all people should have known better, had overlooked them as a possible source of her feeling. He was staring, not in her direction, but directly at her. The moment she looked at him, she understood why.
She was looking into the eyes of her husband.
Her body was in motion long before her mind had the opportunity to comprehend what she had seen. Desperation lent speed to her limbs, for she would have no second chance. The soldiers moved to block her; it would be a race, then, to see who won.
Risking another vicious attack, he reached out to her as she neared. Her hand grabbed his, the fingers of her other hand gliding gently over the mask that covered his face. "I love you, Joseph," she whispered as the soldiers caught up to her, pulling her away. "Always remember that!"
Adeline caught her as the soldiers threw her back against the wall, and she collapsed into her mother-in-law's arms, sobbing. Far crueler than anything they had done to Joseph physically was to force him to witness their deaths. Adeline stroked her hair, murmuring comforting words she knew her deaf daughter-in-law couldn't hear.
The soldiers had formed a line and were taking aim. Adeline turned Jessica so that she was once more facing Joseph. As one, both women crossed their arms over their chests. Let Gyrich think it was some secret message for the Resistance; the only message it contained was for Joseph. Through her tears, her eyes met his one last time.
Her world ended in a hail of bullets.
**************************************************************
"If it was solely up to me, all mutants would be strictly regulated, with mandatory registration and harsh penalties for the flagrant use of dangerous powers."
"Asshole." Rose swore under her breath at the image of the man seated in front of her while she munched on the last of her toast. It was never a good idea to watch the old Archive VR vids during breakfast; they inevitably gave her indigestion.
"But Mr. Gyrich," the interviewer protested, "how can you deny the good that some mutants represent, such as those associated with the Justice League of America or the Avengers?"
The scowl of the President's National Security Advisor seemed uncomfortably up close and personal in the vid. "I don't deny it, just as no one can deny the equally important threat posed by other mutants such as the Brotherhood of Evil or that Trigon creature who threatened New York City last month. But without those villains, we would have no need of superheroes; Senator Kelly's Superpowers Registration Act would allow us to eliminate the supercriminals while being no more than a slight inconvenience to others."
"Yeah, right; I believe that." Rose pulled off the VR headset and returned it to its holder on the nearby shelf. Slight inconvenience . Was that the new buzzword for genocide? She'd long ago lost track of how many friends and relatives had been slaughtered by the government.
Things hadn't changed any, since then.
The bigots had come to power the way bigots always do, through the apathy of the masses. Too late did the population realize that the narrow-minded rhetoric of the last Presidential campaign was anything but hot air. By the time the grassroots opposition began to coalesce, the Sentinels had already begun their massacre of mutants across the country.
The American Resistance Coalition opposed all that the Sentinels and their creators were attempting to do to humanity. They would stop at nothing -- or at least, at very little -- to prevent the metal monstrosities from prevailing. Organized into East- and West-Coast Resistance Networks, they operated through State and City Posts; the City Posts received their orders from the State Posts, which received their orders from the Coast Networks. This, of course, was on the rare occasion when their missions actually contained such a degree of organization; more frequently, they simply reached for whatever opportunity presented itself.
The Gotham City Resistance Post was luckier than most, in that they had the perfect cover for their operations in the form of Wayne Manor. No one inside or outside of the government would have ever begun to suspect that laid-back, not-overly-bright playboy Bruce Wayne was, in reality, the organizational mastermind behind the Post. Combined with the equally impressive skills of his former partner, Dick Grayson, and the current Batman, Tim Drake, the Gotham City Post had been more effective in battling the government than Posts twice their size.
They had stormed the South Bronx Containment Facility to free powerful mutants like Magneto; ambushed government raids in order to kidnap and deprogram Hounds; assassinated key politicians, as well as the rich individuals who supported them; bombed Sentinel manufacturing plants; and planted spies throughout all major business and political institutions. It was a no-holds-barred war for nothing less than the future of humanity, for the Sentinels had made it clear that when their genetic cleansing of America was done, they would move on to the other countries of the world.
And those countries, in turn, had made it clear that they would stop at nothing to prevent that.
It was a hell of a situation in which to raise kids, and not for the first time, Rose questioned her choice of starting a family. Not that she didn't love her children -- of course she did -- but like all parents, she wanted a decent future for them, and it was the one thing no one could guarantee.
But there had never been guarantees, she told herself as she took her breakfast dishes back to the kitchen. Her husband could have told her that in an instant; it was a lesson he'd learned at a very early age. Her own mother hadn't had any guarantees, either of living in her native Cambodia or simply living long enough to see her grandchildren. One never gave up hoping, though.
She rinsed off her dishes and set them in the dishwasher, then did the same for the two sets of children's dishes sitting on the counter. She started the dishwasher cycle, wiped her hands dry on a nearby dishtowel, and stared out the window, lost in daydreams of happier times.
"Rose?"
Tension gripped her immediately. Dick's voice had that soft, soothing quality to it that he added whenever there was bad news to impart. She turned to face him, and she knew what he had to tell her.
"Again?" she asked, hoping it wasn't true.
No such luck. "Again," he sighed. "Kory had been keeping him under surveillance, so she was able to get to him in time. I don't know if he didn't realize that she was watching or if he just didn't care."
Her shoulders slumped. "That's twice in as many months, Dick. When is he going to stop? When he succeeds?"
He placed his hand gently on her shoulder. "You know what he's been through, Rose. Two months is nothing; he'll need two years -- or more -- to make a full recovery." If he ever did; but that remained unspoken. "Why don't you go see him? He's in the hospital wing, room 7."
She nodded absently and wandered off. Jessica had told her that Holocaust survivors had the same problems, the high suicide rate a symptom of "survivor's guilt". Maybe she would have been suicidal too, if she'd witnessed the deaths of her children, her spouse, and her mother. Well, mother she had witnessed, and it had left its scars. Perhaps she shouldn't be so quick to judge.
Garfield Logan was already there, as emerald green as he had been in the Titans' day. He had learned long ago that his green coloration was nothing more than the manifestation of his subconscious childhood fears about the serum that gave him his powers; since that time, he usually preferred his normal appearance of sandy blonde hair and sky blue eyes. Today, though, he was trying to bring back better memories, of better times, in the hope that it would help his brother-in-law.
Sedated as he obviously was, Joseph didn't notice.
Rose pulled up a seat next to Gar and gave him a quick kiss before sitting down. "How is he?"
Gar shrugged. "Just what it looks like, hon. I've been talking to him, but even if he can hear me, I don't know that it does any good. It never did any good with Steve, even when I thought that it had."
Rose sighed. Steve Dayton's death had been a product of his own insanity, but that had never stopped Gar from blaming himself, just as he blamed himself for the deaths of Rita Farr, the Doom Patrol, and his parents. She couldn't really understand that perspective; when her mother was killed, the only people she blamed were her uncle and her father, and rightly so.
Especially her father. Slade Wilson had been told when his grandchildren, Hadassah and David, had been murdered by the Sentinels. He had been told when Joseph was taken away to the Hound kennels, and when his ex-wife and daughter-in-law were executed as 'security risks'. He hadn't left Kenya for any of it, just as he hadn't left when Gar sent him an invitation to their wedding. Rose didn't think it was because he was concerned about the Sentinels targeting him as a mutant, although they certainly would have; he could have met them safely in Canada.
But he had never even replied.
Her gaze shifted from the bloodstained bandages wrapped tightly around her brother's wrists up to the IV tubes in his arm. Did they have the right to force him to live when he clearly didn't want to anymore? Which was more selfish, their desire to keep him, or his desire to leave? She knew her own desires were selfish, but she couldn't help it; apart from her husband and children, he was the only relative she had left.
Other than their father.
With his hair cut so short it could barely curl, Joseph looked a lot like Slade, almost enough to make Rose uncomfortable. Repeated laser treatments were removing the Hound marks that had been tattooed on his face, and with each session, the angular cheekbones and cleft chin that he shared with his father became more evident.
There were other similarities. He had almost as many scars as their father did, the most noticeable of which was an inch-wide burn scar that ran down the side of his right arm from the shoulder all the way to the wrist. A couple of puckered dimples in his abdomen looked like old bullet wounds, and she could see the tips of the numerous whip scars that curled around his ribs and shoulders. The old scar across his throat was the only scar from before the war. The explanation for the other injuries was burned onto his left shoulder, and she rubbed her own left shoulder, unable to suppress a shudder at the sight of the Hound identification brand.
"He'll be OK, sweetheart," Gar murmured, giving her a hug. She wiped away a tear she hadn't realized was there and nodded mutely, wanting to believe, but knowing better. Joseph had shown no signs of improvement in the months he'd been free of the Hound kennels, and it was no secret that the suicide rate of ex-Hounds was well over 50%. Neither she nor Gar knew what to do or say to counter that.
"Mommy?" She turned to the tentative whisper to see her daughter Lily looking up at her pensively. Rita Marie stood behind her older sister, trying to see around her mother.
"Is Uncle Joey sick again, mommy?" Rita asked.
"Yes, honey," she replied, lifting Lily onto Gar's lap and taking Rita onto her own. "But he'll get better, just like last time."
Lily was still watching her mother. "Why is Uncle Joey always sad, mommy?"
Rose glanced at Gar, uncertain of what to say. How could she convey the horrors her brother had seen and experienced? She wouldn't even want to burden her daughters with that sort of knowledge. "Because Aunt Jessie isn't here anymore," she answered. It was truth enough, and it satisfied her daughter's curiosity.
The quiet echo of a deep voice silenced the question forming on Rita's lips. The girls slid off their parents' laps and ducked behind their father's chair moments before the two men entered the room.
"I understand your reservations, Aharon, but you know I wouldn't request it if you weren't the best qualified for the mission. You are the only one who can make it succeed."
The white-haired man sighed. "I know, Bruce; just as you know that I've no desire to put myself in that position again. But I promise you, I'll consider it." Realizing that this was as much of an answer as he would get for the moment, Bruce nodded and left abruptly, without acknowledging the others in the room.
Gar was the first to speak. "'Aharon'? I thought your name was 'Erik'."
"'Erik Magnus Lehnsherr'," he smiled, as with a fond recollection. "A cover, born of necessity. My people suffered enough, both in the Holocaust and during the millennia that preceded it. What do you think would have been the response, had the world known the most hated mutant on the planet was of Jewish descent? They would have banded together to finish what the Nazis began, and though I had turned my back on God in the camps, I never turned my back on my heritage." He smiled as the girls poked their heads out from either side of Gar's chair. "I am no more Romani than you are. I am Aharon Moishe HaLevi, a Polish Jew."
"Your real name is irrelevant," Rose said coldly. "You're Magneto, and in a large way, you're responsible for the situation we're all in."
He looked at her with undisguised pity. "If you truly believe that, then there is less hope for our future than I thought. The government's actions are its own, and would have been taken regardless of what I -- or any other mutant -- did or failed to do. Hatred and intolerance are unreasoning, and as such, require no logical event or person on which to place blame. That Magneto was a name to be feared is of no consequence; had I never existed, you would still find yourself in this situation. It is the very nature of humanity to destroy that which is different." He sighed. "I just wish Charles had learned that in time."
"Doesn't Bruce have something for you to do?" she asked pointedly, glancing at the door.
"He does," he confirmed, watching as Lily and Rita returned to their parents' laps. "My current assignment is to help your brother. For me to do that effectively, however, would require your absence."
That didn't sit well. "What would you know about what those bastards did to him?" she snapped. "You weren't a Hound -- and we busted you out of the South Bronx Containment Facility less than a month after you'd been put there. What makes you think you have more right to be here than his family and friends?"
Aharon held up his left arm, which bore a faded tattoo: 214782. He usually wore long sleeves to conceal the number, but the heat of the Gotham summer had driven even the Master of Magnetism to wearing short sleeved shirts. "My 'name', such as it was, in Auschwitz," he said simply, looking down at his arm. "Don't speak to me of horrors, child; you haven't seen a quarter of what I have."
She turned away sharply to hide the tears that welled up in her eyes. "Over two years," she whispered, clutching her daughter tightly. She glanced back at him over her shoulder. "Have you heard the stories, then? Do you know what's done to Hounds? What does your past experience tell you? How can I reach him?"
"You can't." Brutal, but honest; that had always been his style. "You're family, true, but he needs someone who understands completely what he's been through. You don't. I do. It's as simple as that."
She almost refused. Rose was a stubborn woman, and she didn't like not being in control of a situation. For all that she was no relation to Adeline Kane, she had so many of the woman's characteristics that she may as well have been Joseph's full sister. The presence of her children was the deciding factor; though they never spoke of it, they picked up on the tensions of the adults around them, and life in a Resistance Post was tense enough without adding to the situation with petty personal conflicts. If Bruce thought that Aharon was better for Joseph than Rose and Gar were, so be it; they would have their time when he left.
With a nod to Gar, she stood up and carried Rita from the room. His daughter perched on one broad shoulder, Gar glanced down at Joseph, then up at Aharon. "Do your best," he said quietly. "He needs it."
Aharon nodded once, remaining where he stood even after Gar had left the room. Rose's accusations had irritated him more than he'd let on. Of course he knew about the Hound training techniques. They weren't public knowledge, but between Oracle and Searchers, Inc., the Resistance had managed to infiltrate most of the government's computer systems. What wasn't known to or believed by the general populace was common knowledge to any Resistance personnel who cared to know.
And Aharon definitely cared to know.
Hounds were drugged immediately after capture in order to prevent them from effectively using their powers in self-defense. The men were savagely beaten, the women gang-raped; terror techniques taken straight from the Nazi death camps. All were then strapped down on tables and branded with the Hound ID that would be their names for as long as they survived in the kennels.
Electroshock treatments followed, one session every half hour for three hours. This time, the severe pain was only a side effect; the true purpose of the ECT was to induce amnesia and disorientation, which conditioned the new Hounds for the next phase of their training: 72 hours in a sensory-deprivation chamber, with nonstop subliminal conditioning commands embedded in the white noise of the chamber's sound system. If the Hounds weren't completely insane by the end of their initial training, they were certainly in no shape to effectively resist their keepers.
Those who survived initial training were given the crew cuts and facial tattoos so distinctive of Hounds and assigned to units based on their powers. Those assigned to the Termination Teams were the luckiest; their high-risk position meant that they would most likely be killed in less than a year. The Termination Team Hounds were generally telepaths and energy-projectors -- powers that were useful in vicious combat.
Because of the high mortality rate, the government was constantly searching for replacement Hounds. The Acquisition Team Hounds were the empaths, possessors, and telekinetics -- powers that could capture enemies with minimal harm. Unfortunately, their powers usually insured that they either did not see battle or that they were not seriously injured by it. The end result was a prolonged life in the kennels that drained them of what little humanity they retained with every day that passed. These were the Hounds most likely to be rescued in Resistance raids, but they were also the most severely damaged by their experiences, since the abuse present in their initial training decreased only slightly for their remaining time in the kennels.
Slowly, he made his way to the chair vacated by Rose and sat down. Reaching Joseph would require dredging up unpleasant memories, perhaps even reopening old wounds. It was not something he enjoyed doing, but if it saved lives, he would do it as often as necessary, regardless of the cost to himself.
He studied the motionless figure on the bed before him. How many Hounds had he seen in this condition, lost in the depths of despair? And before that, how many Holocaust survivors? All in all, far too many. And of those, far too many again dead by their own hand.
But Joseph wasn't dead yet, and it was Aharon's job to keep him from getting there.
"Bruce assures me that your mutant metabolism should have burned off the mild sedative by now," he mentioned casually.
Continued silence was his only answer.
"And just how long do you plan on lying there, sulking like a petulant child?"
'Until you leave,' came the curt response.
"Then you'll be here a very long time, since I have no intention of leaving."
Cold fury burned in the green eyes that snapped open to glare at him. 'I heard what you told Rose. Auschwitz was over fifty years ago. Congratulations, you survived. But what I'm dealing with is a little more immediate and raw than dusty memories that are half a century old.'
"Fifty years!" Aharon spat. "Fifty lifetimes would not be enough to rid me of the anger and pain of what happened in that death camp! Do you think you're the only one who's ever suffered? Do you imagine that that Hound kennels were worse than Auschwitz? I can tell you horror stories that would make the kennels seem like kindergarten playrooms!"
'I'm not interested,' Joseph replied angrily. 'Either in your meaningless comparisons or in anyone else's suffering. I've spent my entire life caring about other people. How dare you tell me that even now, after everything I've been through, I have no right to be concerned with myself! You didn't survive the camps by caring about how others were doing; by what right to do demand for me to have such compassion? No one had any for me!'
"And no one will have any for you," Aharon shot back. "That's my point! If you are going to survive, you'll have to do it on your own. No one can help you; no one will help you."
'Then no one will be terribly put out when I decide I'd rather not survive,' Joseph snarled. He flashed his bandaged wrists. 'And if that's the case, how many times will I have to do this before they get the message?'
"What message? That you aren't man enough to withstand some hardship? Jessica would certainly be proud of that ."
'Jessica is dead.' The calm precision of the signs belied the raging turmoil of emotions that lay underneath. 'I watched her get shot to bloody rags. Like I watched my mother die. Like I watched a Sentinel vaporize my children.'
"As I watched my daughter Anya burn to death in an arson fire!" Aharon retorted. "As I watched my wife's love for me die, to be replaced by loathing! Like you Americans would say, 'Join the club'!"
'What part of "I don't care" didn't you understand?'
"Bullshit, you don't care. Are you trying to convince me that you're too stupid to know how to commit suicide properly? If you truly didn't care, you'd already be dead."
Joseph's hands clenched into tight fists in an effort to contain himself. He failed. Tears spilled down his cheeks; whether from pain or anger -- or both -- Aharon couldn't say, but their presence was a good sign, even if Joseph didn't know it. 'If you understood the way you claim to, you wouldn't be trying to force me to live with such horrors as I've seen.'
Leaning forward, Aharon gripped Joseph's shoulders and spoke, softly yet earnestly, words that he told to precious few people.
"When I was a child, all the Jews in my village were taken to a mass grave and shot by the Nazis. I saved myself by subconsciously using my powers, but still I fell into the pit. I was buried beneath the bodies of my parents and sister; I was covered with their blood. The lye the guards were shoveling into the pit burned my flesh as I struggled to get back out. It took a long time to dig my way out of that grave, and once I had escaped, I found myself utterly alone in the world, unable to return to the one place I knew for fear of being shot by those who knew me for what I was. The boy I was died in that grave; the man I am emerged from it. If I could survive that, and all that came after, then you can survive this."
For the moment, at least, the anger had died, leaving only bitterness and despair. 'Do you have any idea how many people I helped the government kill? How many friends? How many people I condemned to life as a Hound, because of what I did?' End, Part One