True Believers: Part Thirteen
"I guess--she was wrong," Nathan said hoarsely.
Domino suddenly found herself at a loss for words. Ironic, considering how easily the idea for the 'story' had come to her. But his guarded expression had slipped, and the torment she saw on his face only underscored the bleak, anguished darkness that clouded his end of their psi-link. She could sense how hard he was fighting for control, but somehow she knew it was futile. A dam had broken, and there was no holding back this flood.
She reached out to him through the link, thinking to reassure him. But Nathan pulled back, and she sighed, sensing his wariness. "Did you miss the point of the story?" she asked gently. "I'm not going to push you, Nate. If you don't want to talk about it, that's okay with me." A white lie on her part, really. She wanted--no, needed to know what was hurting him so badly. But after what had happened in the elevator, she was afraid to push.
Emotions flashed across his face in quick succession; apprehension, reluctance, indecision, finally settling into a blankness that was disturbingly different from his usual stone-faced expression. "No." His voice was drained, oddly lifeless. "I think I'd better tell you before I lose my nerve entirely." The corner of his mouth tugged upwards in a humorless half-smile that vanished instantly.
She squeezed his hand tightly, torn between relief and a strange, fearful anticipation. "As long as you're sure."
"Sure?" Nathan asked tiredly. "I'm not sure of anything anymore, Dom. I think I'm better off that way." She frowned at his suddenly bitter tone, and he shrugged. "I'm good at being cryptic, hadn't you noticed?"
"Oh, occasionally. But you make up for it with these periodic revelations of yours. Sometimes I think you enjoy shocking people." His comment had all but demanded a teasing response, but while she managed to keep her voice light, the words came out more hesitantly than she'd intended. This wasn't some passing bad mood that she could jolly him out of, and she couldn't pretend it was.
"You know me too well," he said dully, and was silent for a long moment. Then, suddenly, he pulled his hand out of hers and rose, pacing restlessly across the room to stare at a blank computer screen, as if seeking some answer in its featureless grayness. "I don't know where to start." His voice was flat. "Did you--see anything, when we re- linked?"
She frowned. When Jean had pulled her into the three- way link, Domino had instantly focused on Nathan, horrified by the sight of him trapped in his own mind, his grip on reality fraying. Still, she HAD seen something else, now that she thought about it. Faint, ghostly images that she'd brushed away like cobwebs in her haste to reach him.
"I'm not sure," she said. He turned back towards her, his expression tightly controlled. "You're the telepath, remember? Something, maybe--but I wasn't paying attention. I was too worried about you." Was, and still am, she thought grimly.
"Then I guess I start at the beginning." Moving slowly, stiffly, as if he'd aged twenty years in the last half- hour, Nathan came and sat back down. He took a deep breath. And began.
***
Emma Frost drifted through the turbulent sea of the astral plane, searching. Banshee's repeated attempts to raise the mansion had failed, and she and Sean had been forced to conclude that something had taken out the X-Men's communications. Sean had suggested this, actually. And since the X-Men's problems usually ending up affecting her students in some way or another, she'd agreed.
At the moment, she was wondering if it had been such a good idea. Wincing as she passed through yet another wave of distortion, she fought to keep her astral form stable. What IS this? This couldn't have been caused by Gina's episode, it was too extensive. She'd never encountered this sort of unfocused, plane-wide turbulence before.
By the time she managed to focus in on the mansion, she'd nearly exhausted herself, fighting against all the interference as if it were an undertow, trying to drown her. She took a moment to gather her composure and assess the situation, and was shocked to realize that Jean was not the only telepath at the mansion.
Good Lord, whose half-brained idea was this? she thought, horrified as she recognized Cable's psi-imprint. This was insane. He had no business coming back from Alaska, not after what she'd seen of his shields when she'd spoken to him last night on the astral plane.
What crisis could have brought him back? And how was it connected to Gina's out-of-body experience--That blasted link--damn Sinister! She reached out, intending to make telepathic contact with Cable, but hesitated as she sensed the turmoil in his mind.
I'd better stay out of this, Emma thought grimly. There was something odd about his psi-imprint, an instability that made her leery of trying to make contact. No matter. Jean had to be around here somewhere.
She pulled away, and continued to search. It was mere moments before she ran into another powerful psi-imprint, one that was nearly a perfect duplicate of Cable's. Lacking the instability, but all but identical.
Nate Grey. It had to be. Using all the subtlety at her command, she made contact briefly, to confirm the boy's identity. Emma had never actually met him before, though she'd felt his presence on the astral plane often enough, and sometimes flirted with the idea of making contact. Was he the source of the disturbance? she wondered. No, there was nothing she could see linking him to it.
Nate Grey and Cable, together at the mansion. That was NOT a particularly reassuring combination. No wonder Gina was having fits. Feeling increasingly worried, Emma concentrated, briefly scanning the minds of the non-telepaths in the area. She avoided Jean, sensing that the X-Men's prime telepath was nearly as agitated as her 'son'. Once she had a clear picture of what was going on, she withdrew.
And while what she found did not entirely explain Gina's enigmatic warning, it certainly lent credence to the girl's fears. So stubborn, Emma thought wearily, regarding Cable from a distance. Every bit as driven as he'd been when she'd first met him--and teaming up with Wisdom again, too. Heaven help us all, Emma thought with a flash of black humor. With those two, it was wisest just to sit back and let the property damage estimates roll in--a lesson the Hellfire Club had learned more than once.
Troubled, she fought her way back through the interference to her body. Making the transition back was more disorienting than usual. Opening her eyes, Emma blinked, trying to readjust her vision to the dim interior of the communications room.
"Em?" Sean asked questioningly. Beside him, Gina's eyes were as wide as dinner plates. Shielding herself carefully, Emma assessed the girl's state of mind. She seemed calmer, which was good--but that would change if she knew what was going on.
So, Emma wasn't going to tell her. "The mansion's still there," she said dryly. "Not under attack, from within or without. There is a bit of a crisis, but the X-Men are handling it. It's not really our concern." #I'll explain, Sean,# she sent, #but I want Gina out of here before I do.#
Sean blinked, but the surprise on his face was gone in a heartbeat. With his usual charming smile, he turned to Gina. "See, lass? Nothing t'worry about. Why don't you run along back to your homework?"
Gina looked from him to Emma and then back again, and Emma groaned inwardly. As smooth as Sean had been, Gina was no fool. For someone with so little real life experience, she had an uncanny ability to see right through people.
"You're not telling me the truth," the girl said in a low, almost savage voice. Sean started to protest, but Gina continued, the color rising in her cheeks. "You think I can't handle whatever's going on, so you're keeping it from me! You're just as bad as Andrew and Essex!" She whirled and ran from the room.
Sean looked appalled. "Saints preserve us," he said, looking a little green around the edges. "Did the wee lass just compare us to Sinister?"
"Oh, relax!" Emma snapped, trying to cover her own distress at Gina's vehemence. "She's acting like a normal teenager, Sean, throwing a temper tantrum. Considering what she is, I'd consider that a healthy sign." If only that were true, Emma thought grimly. Gina was just starting to trust them, and something like this could be a major setback. And considering our little dreamweaver's power levels, we do NOT want her sullen and hostile.
But Emma would be damned if she'd encourage the girl's link to Cable. For good measure, she silently called down a few more curses on Sinister's head. Gina needed safety and security, to grow into her abilities. She would find neither if she was dragged into Cable's affairs. Askani affairs, Emma corrected herself. The Hellfire Club had encountered Blaquesmith's network often enough that Emma knew a fair bit about Askani operations in this era. And what she knew was not reassuring.
Taking a deep breath, she proceeded to fill Sean in on what was happening at the mansion.
***
"I never told you how we--my Clan, I mean," Nathan amended, "lost the rebellion. I know you've wondered about it." He gave her a curiously defensive look. "I wish I could say I've wanted to tell you, but that would be a lie. I've never been able to--cope very well with what happened. Pete knows some of it--"
"Wisdom knows?" Domino said before she could stop herself. Nathan stiffened at the sharp question, and Domino cursed herself silently. Real swift, Dom, she told herself savagely, and extended a wordless apology along their link.
Some of the tension left his posture. "Not all of it," he said in a subdued voice. "We--an operation went wrong, Dom, and we were captured. It was a bio-weapons facility in Russia--because we didn't destroy it, Apocalypse's scientists went ahead and tested their latest project on the local population. I was--well, to put it bluntly, I was losing it. Pete was trying to keep me talking, and it just sort of--came out."
"Nathan, you don't owe me an explanation," she said, firmly pushing that faint, lingering jealousy into the farthest corner of her mind. Now was not the time to be selfish. "We all have our secrets--I have plenty of my own, remember?"
Nathan nodded slowly. "I just--I don't want you to think I was trying to keep it just from you." He gave an odd laugh. It was a hollow, haunted sound. "I was trying to keep it from everyone, Dom. Myself included. I try to bury it, but it's always at the back of my mind, waiting." The look in his eyes grew a little wild, and Domino, alarmed, reached out and took his hands between her own. Techno-organic fibre and flesh-and-bone, both were as cold as ice.
"Oh, no, you don't," she said firmly, fighting back a spasm of fear. "Focus, Nate. I'm not letting you fade out on me." She squeezed his hands tightly.
He jumped, startled. "I'm fine," he said quickly. But he was visibly shaken, breathing raggedly. "It started in the--twelfth year of the rebellion, I suppose. We'd liberated three whole provinces by then--most of what's now south-eastern Europe. We'd gained territory in a few other places, too, and we had some support almost everywhere, but the Protectorate--that's what we called it--was our power base." He hesitated for a moment. "It was too close to the Canaanite heartland--in what this era calls the Middle East--for their liking. They couldn't pretend we were a 'minor insurgency' any longer. We were a serious challenge to their authority." A brief, wistful smile flitted across his face. "The people under our protection loved their freedom, Dom. Their lives weren't easy, but they lived them with such joy--"
"So what changed?" she prompted gently.
"Nothing, for years after that," he said harshly, that moment of remembered happiness gone as if it had never been. "We fought. It seemed like we were always fighting, like it never stopped, but eventually, we came to a stalemate. We couldn't push our borders out any farther, but the Canaanites couldn't make any inroads into our territory." This time, his smile was wintry. "They never seemed to realize that 'low-tech' didn't mean 'stupid'. We might not have had their airships or their heavy weapons, but we knew very well how to sabotage them. And that part of the world favors guerilla tactics, even in this era." His voice grew bitter. "But we couldn't hold them off forever. I knew that, so I decided we needed help. And the logical ones to turn to were the other Clans--or so I thought."
***
Dana was doing her best to remain inconspicuous. They had 'reconvened' in the computer room at Kitty's request. Dana knew that her friend was dying to take another crack at Cable's sleeper program, despite everything else that was going on. Scott had agreed quickly, obviously hoping to draw Hank, who'd been in here working on the computer already, into the debate.
Not much hope of that, Dana thought frankly, looking over at Hank. He and Kitty were at the main console, intent on their work. "As a doctor," Hank had said when Scott had asked him his opinion, "I would naturally prefer Nathan to remain here. On the other hand, as an X-Man who has occasionally fought beside him, I also recognize the utter stupidity of attempting to force the issue. I would suggest you do the same." That, as they say, had been that. Scott had been studiously ignoring his presence ever since.
Sam was standing beside her, and Dana could sense his increasing uneasiness. She wondered what was going through his mind. He'd been so vocal in his opposition down in the medlab, but now he seemed unsure of himself, willing to stand back and let Logan do all the talking.
"You all right?" she whispered, reaching out and taking his hand. He looked down at her, concern in his blue eyes.
"Ah'm worried about Cable and Domino," he said just as quietly. Seeing her surprise, he gave her a tight smile with very little humor in it. "We're talkin' about two people with pretty unique approaches to problem-solvin', Dana."
"Maybe we should've checked them both for weapons before we left," Dana joked, and was rewarded when Sam's smile grew more natural.
"If you two wouldn't mind?" Scott said coldly, giving them a quelling look. Dana felt a stab of irritation from Sam, but he didn't respond to Scott's rebuke. "Logan, talking about this in the abstract is all well and good, but I'm still waiting for an explanation of what happened between you and Nathan in the elevator."
Ouch, Dana thought, wincing at Scott's choice of words. But Logan merely raised an eyebrow, and Dana couldn't sense the slightest hint of anger from him.
"Scott?" he said in a remarkably level voice.
"What?" Scott snapped irritably.
"Shove it."
A strangled laugh escaped Dana before she could stop it. Wisdom, standing over beside Kitty, where she could 'keep an eye' on him, as she'd put it, guffawed loudly.
Jean looked frustrated. "All right, that's enough!" she snapped, distributing an equal-opportunity glare around the room, finally settling on Logan and Pete. "Either the two of you start spilling it, or I'm going to drag it out of you telepathically!"
"You're welcome to try, love," Pete growled, the amusement vanishing from his expression. His implication was perfectly clear. Kitty, who had turned away from the console at Jean's outburst, gave him a worried look that he didn't seem to notice.
Logan did, though, and stepped in so smoothly that Dana was taken aback. "Settle down, kid. Red's just blowing off steam--"
"You think so?" Jean asked angrily.
Logan met her eyes unflinchingly. "I hope so," he said softly. "I'd hate to think Hana's lack of ethics was contagious, Jeanie."
Dana winced. That had to sting-- Jean actually took a step backwards, but then anger blazed anew in her green eyes. Damn it, Dana thought helplessly, I wish I could figure out what was going on here! Jean was the root of the problem, she was sure of it. Scott was merely mirroring her emotions, as if he'd been--infected or something through their psi-link. She'd never noticed the two of them doing anything like this before, never seen anything even remotely similar from Cable and Domino. And considering the precarious nature of Cable's shields, Dana would've thought them to be more likely to develop some kind of problem with their psi-link. But she couldn't ignore the evidence of her own senses, baffling though it might be.
"Fine," Jean almost spat. "Tell me, Logan, what's the point of all of this? Do you think that if you stall until the plane gets here, we won't have any choice but to let this go?"
"No," Logan said very slowly. "What I'm hoping, darlin', is that you and Scott'll settle down and look at things rationally."
"We are not the ones being irrational here!" Jean said incredulously.
"Could've fooled me," Pete muttered. Kitty growled something under her breath and elbowed him firmly in the ribs. "Ouch!"
"You're not helping here, Wisdom," she said through clenched teeth. Dana had been expecting something like this--Kitty had not been impressed with the way Pete had been acting in the War Room, which was why she'd wanted him within reach in here.
But Pete, instead of shutting up, gave her a displeased look. "Why is it that you always bloody well assume the worst?" he asked pointedly. Kitty looked taken aback, and he sighed, his expression softening. "I know, I've given you good reason--but just because I open my mouth doesn't mean I'm going to put my friggin' foot in it, Pryde--"
"So if you weren't going to make a smart comment, Wisdom, what did you have to say?" Scott asked sarcastically. Pete's head whipped around, and he glared at Scott angrily.
These two are not getting off to a good start, Dana thought. Poor Kitty--first Pete strikes sparks with Ororo, and now Scott, too.
"Of all the soddin'--I was going to be a little more diplomatic about this, Summers, but you just changed my mind for me." The anger Dana was feeling from Pete faded, and his expression turned dead serious. Dana knew that look. No more smart comments would be forthcoming. "Nathan's an adult. He's not an X-Man. And he's got more experience in situations like this than anyone in this bloody room. Now, maybe I'm just slow, Cyclops, but maybe you'd like to tell me how you think you have any bloody right to be making decisions for him?"
Dana sensed Scott was about to make an angry response, but then, her empathic awareness was dominated by a sudden, resolute determination that was coming unmistakably from Sam. She looked up at him, startled by the set look on his face. He'd just come to some sort of decision, she could feel it.
"Besides, sir--ma'am," Sam said to Scott and Jean, his voice harder than she'd ever heard it before, "what makes y'think the rest of us are gonna let you?"
***
Domino frowned. "Other Clans?" she asked curiously.
"McCoy would call them 'remnants of the previous political system'," Nathan said evenly. "Very different from the Clan Chosen. That was the problem." He sighed, rubbing at his temples for a moment. Part of Domino was grateful that he'd drawn somewhat back from the link. Even at this distance, she was sharing his headache, and it was making it difficult to think straight. "Maybe--if we'd been composed only of Askani refugees from Ebonshire, the other Clans would have accepted us more easily. But we welcomed anyone who wanted to fight."
"And the other Clans didn't?" That didn't make much sense, Domino thought. Hadn't these other Clans resisted the Canaanites too? Then again, she thought grimly, how many tyrants throughout history have stayed in power because their enemies were fighting among themselves? She doubted that human nature had changed much, even in two thousand years.
"The Clans--" Nathan trailed off, shaking his head. "I admired them. I still do, in some ways. They fought so hard to preserve their own cultural traditions. It wasn't easy, in my time. Apocalypse had destroyed the old Clan Alliance, and most of the surviving Clans vanished in the civil wars after his death. Those that survived had--turned inward, become isolationist and hostile. Even xenophobic, in some instances." He sighed. "They didn't approve of our methods. Too--confrontational, I suppose. And they did not like the fact that we accepted volunteers from among their young Clansmen. They saw that as a threat to their survival--weakening the Bloodline. But we didn't have any choice, Dom. We couldn't afford to turn away anyone who could fight." His expression had grown despondent. "I always wondered what would have happened if we hadn't taken in those Clansmen. Maybe things would have been different."
"Maybe," Domino said, squeezing his hands tightly. "Or maybe not, Nathan." He looked up at her, and she gave him a faint smile. "You always told me that playing 'what-if' was pointless."
"What is, is," he said with a humorless smile. "And I'm not supposed to have regrets, am I?"
Something told Domino the comment wasn't meant for her. Nevertheless, she responded to it. "The day you're convinced of that," she said softly, "is the day I'll know it's time to give up on you, Nate." There was a flash of what almost felt like fear along their link, and Domino sent back an instant reassurance that she wasn't going anywhere, that she wouldn't dream of leaving him--
"You have the damnedest way of making a point, Dom," Nathan said unsteadily. "Where was I?"
"The Clans," she reminded him.
"Right," he said dully. "They distrusted us because we were different. We had runaway Clansmen, mutants, humans, synthetics--people from the lowest caste to the highest, all fighting side by side. The only thing most of them had in common was that they'd left their old lives to fight under our banner." He hesitated briefly. "I translate the name of my Clan into English as 'Chosen', but the original world--well, with only a slight difference in pronunciation, it can mean 'outcast', too. And that was how most of the other Clans regarded us."
"What a waste," Domino said quietly, hearing the bitterness in his voice. "So you had no luck making alliances?"
He shrugged. "There was one Eurasian Clan--our neighbours, the Hellocoi. Our interests marched with theirs, you might say. But their territory was in Panesia--southern Greece, sorry--so they were too vulnerable to attack. They gave us what help they could, but they couldn't do it openly. We had to turn elsewhere."
"Elsewhere?" Domino asked, fascinated despite herself. She'd known for quite a while now that Nathan had grown up two thousand years in the future. Hell, she'd even been to his time, if only for a night. Although she hadn't seen anything but the Canaanite and Clan Chosen camps, she'd gotten enough of an impression of the people there to know that their beliefs and way of life were so different from hers that she might as well have been a traveler from an alien world. But images had flowed through the psi-link, accompanying Nathan's words and opening a window in her mind, a window to a world she couldn't have imagined and could barely recognize as Earth.
"Africa," Nathan said pensively, and the images changed. "The Pan-African Confederacy, to be specific. The surviving African Clans had united after Apocalypse's death. They were brilliant warriors, but too--individual, you might say. They were very poorly organized, and the Canaanites were starting to make a major push in their direction about the same time my Clan was looking for allies."
"Why were the Canaanites interested in Africa?" she asked hesitantly.
"It's--complicated. They'd refused to swear allegiance to the Canaanite Order, but that wasn't all of it. There were strategic issues, economic issues--Africa suffered the least damage from the nuclear wars five hundred years before that--even religious issues. Oath, don't ask me to explain those, Dom." He shrugged uneasily. "That good enough?" She nodded, and he continued. "The Pan-Africans needed our experience. We needed their numbers. So we made a deal. I left Tetherblood in command in Eurasia, and took some troops over to the Confederacy." He suddenly chuckled, a sound that had a spark of real humor in it. Domino blinked, startled by his sudden mood swing. "You should have seem it, Dom. Between the monster storms, the pollution, and the mutated aquatic life, the seas were not a friendly place in my era. The Metraina--Mediterranean least of all. But we scrounged everything we could find that would float without registering on Canaanite sensors. Fishing boats, cargo barges, rafts--some of them as far from seaworthy as you could get. Most of my troops were from inland, and I swear, they ALL got seasick--"
"Must've been fun," she said mildly.
"Oh, right," he said caustically. "By the fiftieth time someone vomited on me, I was ready to swim the rest of the way."
"And?" she asked teasingly. Inwardly, though, she was troubled. She hoped he wasn't just seizing on this less-painful memory to avoid continuing with his story. Even if he is, don't push, she warned herself. Let him tell it in his own time.
"Dawnsilk threatened to tie me to the mast," he said, and then sighed, shaking his head. "I'm stalling," he admitted awkwardly. "We made it across, obviously. I've never seen so many people fall on their knees and kiss the dirt in my life. Things went well. I had my troops work with theirs while I trained their officers. It took some doing, to convince them that an army based on the principle of small, mobile battle-groups that could work both alone and in concert was much more efficient than head-on charges." He snorted. "A few of their young officers had particularly thick skulls, as I recall. X-Force was mannerly by comparison."
"Sounds like you had an interesting time of it," Domino said with a faint smile.
"That's one way to put it. Like most Clans, they had this quaint custom of dueling, and my pupils insisted upon regarding my suggestions as insults to their 'ancient and noble warrior tradition'."
"And of course, you didn't enjoy that at all, did you?" she asked sweetly. Nathan gave her a wry smile.
"Who, me?" Domino had a hard time not laughing, even under these circumstances. "Seriously, Dom, once their pride was out of the way, they were very quick learners. In six months, there wasn't a Canaanite soldier on the continent, let alone in the Confederacy. They'd even chased the Canaanites out of the northeast--Egypt, I mean. Away from the 'holy sites', like Akkaba." Anger twisted his features for a moment, and was replaced by a curious desolation. "They did much better in the northeast than my Clan ever did."
Domino straightened in her chair, gripped anew by the sick horror she'd felt when she, Nathan, Storm and Caliban had been faced with Tyler's twisted attempt to prevent the future slaughter at Akkaba. Nathan met her eyes, saying nothing. The massacre had been pointless, but Domino found herself wondering how much worse the original event must have been, to have driven Tyler to do such a thing.
"It depends on your perspective," Nathan said lifelessly. "As I was saying, things were going well. Perfectly, I thought. I swore blood-brotherhood with Huson, their warlord. He promised equal return on the debt the Confederacy owed us, whenever we chose to call it up. I thought we were set."
"But?" she asked softly.
"We came home," he said bitterly. "You know this part of the story. I got overconfident and let myself get suckered into what I thought was just a skirmish. Aliya, Tyler, and everyone else in the base camp that day paid the price." He gave a hollow laugh at the look on her face. "Oh, that's not it, Dom. That's where the real story begins. Everything up until now has just been a history lesson."
***
Walking the perimeter, Bishop froze at the rustling sound in the trees ahead of him. He flipped the safety off his gun, every muscle in his body tensing. With all the perimeter defenses down thanks to Cable's sleeper program, they were dangerously open to attack. This could be anyone--
His weapon was suddenly enveloped in ice. "You're getting so paranoid you're scaring me, B," Bobby Drake said seriously, emerging from the shadows. "What the hell do we have to do? Run around shouting out our names so that you don't shoot us?" He shook his head. "I should've let Joseph come looking for you when he offered, but what good would I have been, repairing the hangar doors?"
Bishop growled a profanity under his breath. "How am I supposed to react, Drake?" he asked, exasperated by his attitude. "Someone has to be alert, since Cable has been so irresponsible as to strip us of our defenses like this--"
"Right, sure," Drake said sarcastically. "Give me some credit, Bishop. Cable's just your latest excuse for paranoid behaviour." His expression turned thoughtful. "You felt it, didn't you?"
"Felt what?" Bishop asked defensively, although he knew very well Drake was talking about the empathic jolt.
"The dumb act doesn't suit you, Bishop." Drake's gaze was unusually level. "Cable wasn't being irresponsible, Bishop. He was scared and desperate, and we were stupid." He shook his head, something very close to shame in his eyes. "I don't think pushing him into a nervous breakdown in order to keep him from getting hurt's a real good idea, Bishop."
"You're both idiots," came a harsh voice from the undergrowth, and Marrow emerged. Bishop hadn't even heard her. Infuriated by his inattention, he started to chip the ice away from his gun. Marrow gave him a dismissive look, and Bobby a scornful one.
"Really, Sarah?" Bobby said sarcastically. "And I suppose you've got it all figured out?"
"I understand better than you, surface-dweller," Marrow said cuttingly, and then smirked at Bishop. "No one's out here, future-man. You can stop shaking in your boots."
Bishop swore, but Marrow gave a grating laugh and started back towards the mansion, ignoring him.
"Sometimes I think she could give Wolverine lessons in sneakiness. She's getting awfully good at it."
"Shut up, Drake."
to be continued...
[FOOTER]