My Soul To Take
I can't move an inch without his permission. I'm trapped by his invisible shackles, not just around my arms and legs, but my toes and fingers, my chest, my head, my mouth and eyes, so that every blink, every breath is orchestrated by his wishes. There's nothing left of me to take over, I'm a marionette with his strings around me, a lump of clay with words in its head to make it a golem. A robot, a thing, and I want to scream, but I can't.
All this, and yet he won't allow me to lose consciousness. I can see all that goes on around me. They have let me keep the visor, and that scares me. I have been captured before, but always blinded, rendered helpless while at the same time reminded that I'm dangerous, that I have power and that no matter how frightened I am, they're more frightened of me.
This time, there is no such comfort. They can stand right in front of me, moving so close they're perfect targets, and yet they're not afraid. Why should they? They know I can't even lift my hand to the trigger. It scares me shitless. That simple gesture, telling me that they have nothing to be afraid of, is also telling me to lose hope. There's nothing to look forward to.
I can't believe that. I mustn't. Even as they bring in the children, I tell myself that there must be a way out.
I can see the children staring at me as they're taken down the corridors. I see their terrified faces, the tears running down their dirty cheeks, and I can hear their cries and pleas. I can even hear the way some of the guards are muttering between themselves. They still care enough to feel guilt for imprisoning children, even mutant children, but they're not going to do anything about it. They'll keep telling themselves that it's somebody else's problem while they turn those poor kids into puppets like me.
God. They're not actually going to do that, are they?
I feel my arms starting to tingle, and I must be acting differently somehow, because one of the guards says "come on", and I'm forced to follow him into a room where he pushes me down on a table and injects the foul stuff into the back of my skull again. I can feel his heavy elbow dig into my back, just like I feel the poison burning my skin and the table pressing against my chest. All the time while they're doing it, the kids keep crying outside, and as much as their desperate voices are killing me, I'm still happy to hear them, because it means they're still in control, still people to themselves, if not to the guards shutting them in.
I haven't seen the professor since I came here. Maybe he's dead, but I don't think so. Every time I replay our capture in my head, I come to the same conclusion: they want him for something. I'm not important to them, a bonus perhaps, but they really wanted the professor. But I don't know what they've done to him, if they have made him a puppet like me. How they could possibly do that, I don't know. He's a telepath, for fuck's sake, I've seen him halt a whole museum in action, there's no way anyone could... Except they must have. They must have, because otherwise he would have come for me by now. And he would never ever have let them take the kids.
There's no use in beating yourself up with worst-case scenarios. Logically, I know this, but it's so god damned hard to hold on to logic when my imagination is all that I have left.
"Sit down," the guard tells me, and I do, because I have to follow all of their orders unless their boss overrides them. Those are the rules. This guard is one of the more important ones, I keep seeing him. His name escapes me, but it doesn't matter -- if I'm nobody to them, why should they be anybody to me? He could be Nose. It's a childish retribution, I know, but I cling to it. God, just let me keep something.
I've never been much of a praying man. It's not a question of belief, really. I believe in the sun, and I've never seen the need to talk much to it. On the other hand, I don't believe in sock eating monsters, and yet I curse them every time I've done my laundry.
But now I can't stop praying. I close my eyes when the Nose tells me to, because even such things as dozing off has become focused on their needs rather than mine. While my breathing and heart rate slow down, my mind is racing with prayers unnumbered.
I pray that they'll forget about me long enough for me to raise my hand and blast them away. One blast, and the rest would take care of itself. I pray that it would happen when he is present, so I could sent the beam straight into his face and watch him fall back against the wall, hear his skull crunch as it's crushed between the force of my beam and the hard wall. For the first time in my life, I'm praying for vengeance, with a blood thirst that appals me and appeals to me both. Just for the chance to take him out, dear God, once and for all. Failing that, I pray for that single blast to hit the ceiling, send it down on them -- on me too, if need be. They say you did it for Samson, you could do it for me. Let me take down the ceiling.
But not on the children. I have to consider the children.
I pray for the team to find me, for that jerk Logan to appear with a smirk on his face, jeering at me for letting myself get caught. I pray for the lights to go out as Ororo sends lightning through the power circuits, and for the doors to slide aside to reveal my beautiful Jean.
I pray for the guards to freeze up, letting the professor come through. I pray that he'll cut the bonds they've tied me with, release me from my prison with gentle care like he did so many years ago.
But when they inject that poison of theirs into my head, or in the middle of the night when I lay on the cot in my cell, waiting for a sleep I've never asked for, feeling the burning wound at the back of my skull, I have but one prayer. Then I pray that they will give me too much, that they'll make a mistake and not realize it until it's too late. Let me die before I wake.