In a matter of minutes, a sleepy Eddie and I found ourselves riding through the sky on Saberwolf's back, thanks to Eddie's mutant ability to channel his flight through others. He seemed less than enthused to be out on what during regular hours he would have considered an adventure. Unfortunately for Eddie, you usually didn't get to pick and choose when to get into some trouble. It usually happened whenever it felt like it.
Eddie's eyes were half open, as he was still waking up, even while guiding Saberwolf through the air with his powers, "Did you really have to wake me up for this?"
Yes, I did. Eddie could fly faster than Jay could, and could do it silently, "I need you to follow Jay," I said, "You said you wanted to do X-Men shit. This counts as X-Men shit."
Eddie grumbled, conceding the point, "Okay, but did you really have to wake Wolf up for this?"
"I was not sleeping," Wolf immediately defended, perhaps a bit too quickly.
Eddie was skeptical of our A.I. friend, "Sure. You were just in power save mode or something when we found you up in that tree."
Before things could descend into squabbling, I interjected, "I need Wolf because he can track mutants. You fly faster than Jay, so we can catch up, but he has a fifteen minute head start," I said, only for Eddie to turn around, giving me a dry look, "I'm not blaming you. We all can't be blessed with the inability to sleep."
"Blessed?" Eddie said skeptically.
"Did I say blessed? I meant cursed," I corrected, "Sorry, it's the insomnia."
"When was the last time you actually slept?" Eddie asked. I couldn't recall, giving him a shrug in return, "...Dude, we've really got to figure something out about that. That can't be good for you."
"Can we figure out what we're going to do about this first?" I offered as an alternative. Dwelling on my lack of sleep and all of the negative things that came with it would do us no good here.
Eddie let it drop, letting out a yawn as he kept us airborne, "What are you even expecting to find?"
"I don't know," I replied before trying to properly defend my decision, "The guy snuck off of campus at 3 in the morning. Nothing good ever happens after 3 a.m."
Having been presented with a universal truth, Eddie slowly started coming onboard, "It's worth a look, I guess. And hey, if I stay out 'til dawn for nothing, at least it's Sunday. I can just sleep in all day when we get back."
"That's the spirit, Wingman!" A 'too sweet' later, and we were coming up with a plan for approach, "So, how are we going to play this when we find him?"
"I dunno," Eddie said, "How about we just run up on him and be like, 'Hey, Jay! Fancy seeing you here. This is where you get your weed too huh? Small world.'"
I scoffed, "No one sneaks out to buy weed at 3 a.m." A good way to get cursed out by your dealer was to try and set up a purchase for whatever pissant amount a high school student could afford at an ungodly hour such as this.
Eddie's brain started cranking, which was bad news for what was left of my sanity, "You're right. Think he's on pills or something? Ooh, is Kick still a thing?" He was way too excited about that possibility.
"Eddie, he's not on drugs!" I said, rebuking him, "Laura said he smelled like death, not shit-tier weed and Oxycontin."
One part of what I said stuck with Eddie in particular, "Laura said what? Death? Why are you just now sharing this information?"
A good question. The last few days had been a whirlwind, "Because stuff with Laura has been weird lately, so I didn't think about it."
"Still? Thought you guys were past that awkward stuff."
"We are, but things are getting weirder."
"Well, that's-," Eddie stopped himself mid-sentence and reached back to elbow me, "Wait, stop distracting me. Backtrack to that 'smells like death' crap."
I never got the chance, as Saberwolf picked that moment to speak up, "Stop. We are here."
Eddie brought us to a stop in the sky. We both looked down on the town we had "Where is 'here? We've been flying for thirty minutes."
"Westchester, New York," Wolf said. His sight panel lit up as he scanned the area, "Joshua Guthrie is .362 miles southeast this location. The only building with active electricity is a church."
Eddie seemed befuddled as he lowered us to the ground a block or two away. I could relate, "He flew twenty miles just to worship before the sun came up?" He asked as we touched down, "What church is letting him in at 3? Early morning Mass doesn't even start until 5."
I hopped off of Wolf's back, keeping an eye out just in case, "Pretty sure Jay's not Catholic, but these are all questions we can ask once we go and see what's up," I gave Saberwolf a pat on the back, "Hang back, Wolf. Don't want you to freak out the deacon."
There probably wasn't much that could freak out a congregation if a kid with wings was welcome, but I didn't want to take any chances. Bringing a big metal wolf with more blades on him than a butcher shop into a church more than likely wouldn't sit easy with most.
Saberwolf took the request in stride, "Understood. I will scout the area," He said before jumping off of the street to the nearest roof.
I winced at the sound of him leaping. He'd scraped a chunk out of the road with his paws, "Wolf, low profile!" I hissed loudly, "I swear, I think he likes scaring people."
Eddie and I hustled on foot, managing to catch up to Jay as he was heading up the front stairs of a church that looked very well-funded. He heard us coming and turned around, "What are you guys doing here?" He asked in surprise.
"That's what we should be asking you," I said, jogging up a few steps to stand level with him, "What are you doing flying off by yourself at this hour?"
Eddie nodded in agreement, "Yeah, that's a Sol move. Do you want Frost to hate you the way she hates him? Because that's how you get that."
I rolled my eyes, but noticed Jay tucking something into the pocket of his jacket, trying to do so out of our sight, "What is that?"
Jay hesitated, realizing he'd been caught trying to conceal whatever he had, "It's... a cure."
"A cure for what?" I asked, receiving no answer. Jay couldn't make eye contact with me, "Jay. A cure for what?" Instead of saying anything, he pulled out a vial. All of a sudden, things from months before came spilling back, "That's not the Hope Serum is it?" Didn't the X-Men get rid of all of that garbage months ago? "Icarus, you know where that stuff came from, right? Why it exists?"
Eddie was blunt and resentful, "-An alien stole our teacher's corpse and took the old Legacy Virus out of his body to wipe out mutants," He said in a hard tone.
"Does it matter where it came from if it works?" Jay asked, seemingly unable to read the mood.
Eddie glared at Jay, "Yeah, seeing as how that same alien cut Sol's guts out and got Miss Pryde shot off into space."
I jumped in, trying to set some direction in the conversation. If we kept pushing, it was just going to start a fight. We wouldn't get anywhere that way, "Where did you even get this? The X-Men destroyed the place where this was made."
"Reverend Stryker says God provides for those truly in need."
I looked over at Eddie. His slowly mounting anger quickly turned to alarm. The feeling was mutual on my part. He'd heard the same thing I had, "Don't tell me the person who's been helping you out is-."
Knowing where I was going with that, Jay preempted me, "He's not what you think. If you just talked to him, you'd understand."
No. That wasn't going to happen. Not by choice, "Well, fortunately, he's nowhere near here, so I don't have to ever deal with that."
As if summoned by the spirit of misfortune, a voice that I'd until that point only heard in hellfire sermons on the TV filled my ears, "I wouldn't speak in absolutes in such a way, Bellamy."
There he was, looking just the way he had on the screen. Short, gray hair, conservatively styled, clad in his Sunday best, with a large golden cross hanging from around his neck. Reverend Stryker approached, looking right at Eddie and me. The smirk on his face made my skin crawl.
He walked right past us without stopping, unlocking the front doors of the church, "Welcome back, Joshua," He said, gesturing for Jay to enter, "Come on in."
Jay smiled at Stryker and headed inside, leaving Eddie and I out on the stairs. What could we do? Clearly, he wanted to be there. At that point, I was fine with clubbing him over the head and dragging him off caveman-style.
Stryker spared us one last look before disappearing inside as well, closing the door behind him. Eddie waited for about five seconds. When the street didn't erupt in gunfire around us, he quickly turned to head back down the stairs, "Stryker has a church in Westchester? Okay, we're done here. Waaaaay too in over my head now."
"Eddie, no," I stopped him before he could get out of reach, "We can't just leave Jay here by himself."
"Yes, we can," Eddie said, nodding slowly, "We totally can. Trust me, I'm the team expert on X-Men escapades. Stryker has a serious body count. What do we do?"
In this case? I only had one answer, "Hope for the best, prepare for the worst," I said vaguely.
Eddie's posture slumped, "Man, why didn't you just blast him?"
There was a time and a place for hero shit, and this wasn't it.
"Do you really think Jay would have let me just blast him?" I asked. If I'd have shot Stryker then and there, it would have just made things worse, "Look, if anything goes down, a quick text to Wolf, and he'll come in chainsaws and knives blazing," That seemed to put Eddie more at ease, but not by much, "Let's just stick with Jay, and make sure Stryker isn't trying anything on him."
Eddie fidgeted in place, not that I could blame him. He'd just come face-to-face with a cold-blooded killer, "We should call this in. Colossus isn't going to like getting a call at 3:30 in the morning."
"I'm sure he'd like it less if we didn't say anything and got murdered," He'd chew us out, perhaps. But not too harshly since we were still doing the right thing, "We've got to get someone over here. You were right about this being out of our league."
Eddie waited impatiently for the signal to finally give way to someone speaking, "Da? Is Piotr," Mister Rasputin said tiredly.
Eddie relayed the message as quickly as he could, "Reverend Stryker's got Jay. We're in Westchester. Use the tracker, to find exactly where. Get here fast, please. Gotta go," It sounded like Mister Rasputin had broken his bed jumping out of it before the phone went silent, "Now what? Can we go home?"
"Not as long as Jay stays. We've gotta wait it out," I said. Eddie let out a groan, "This counts as X-Men stuff, Wing," I tried to boost his morale with bravado. We did have a responsibility to make sure one of our own didn't get himself hurt.
Eddie let out a sigh and put his phone away, "Draft an S.O.S. for Wolf and have it on standby," He said, sounding resigned to his fate, "Dude, we're gonna die."
"Over my-," I stopped myself before another word could leave my mouth.
Unfortunately, Eddie had caught on to what I'd been going for. Despite the situation, he couldn't help but grin, if only for a second, "You were about to say, 'Over my dead body,' weren't you?" I didn't answer. He shook his head and gestured forward, "After you. You're a better bullet sponge than I am."
I took the lead going in. Half because I was the leader, and half because Eddie was right. I wasn't nearly as tough as an armored up Hisako, but if someone was to get shot, between the two of us I had a better chance of walking away from it.
Inside, we weren't met with dozens of rifles pointed our way. It was just Jay sitting with Stryker near the front of the worship area, chatting it up like Stryker was his advisor.
One thing was for sure though. If we made it out of this, the first thing I was doing was heading to Frost or Summers and dropping a dime on Jay. This was the kind of crap you didn't keep to yourself.
Eddie and I sat. He busied himself with drafting an email that he CC'ed to every teacher he could remember enough of their address for autocorrect to help him reach. Just in case there was someone important that Mister Rasputin couldn't rouse on his own into riding to the rescue.
All we could do for the time being was hunker down and lessen our chances of dying before anyone could get us out. With that in mind, I got up and started moving to Jay's pew. The same one Stryker was also in.
Eddie freaked out under his breath, "No-no-no, we're fine back here. Sol, what are you doing?"
I pointed to our classmate and our probable enemy, "If we're right next to the guy, his goons probably won't shoot at us or blow us up."
While Eddie didn't like my logic, he lacked better ideas, "Aw, man... you're telling me the safest place to be right now is right next to Stryker?"
I was just as thrilled about it as he was, but again, no better ideas. We moved to the pew behind Jay and Stryker. He seemed irked by our presence. Whether it was because we were cutting in on whatever he was saying to Jay, or just because it meant he had to deal with three pieces of mutant filth instead of just one, I didn't know.
"Good of you to join us, Bellamy," Stryker said, "You and Edward both."
...What?
Eddie and I went wide-eyed, "...Dude..." Eddie tried and failed to whisper, "Why does he know our names?"
"Young Joshua here has shared much about the things that concern him," Stryker said, "I first tried to lend an ear to him some time ago, and as I hear, I have you to thank for him deciding to accept my offer."
Oh. That whole piece of advice I'd given Jay to try and get him to talk to someone about his issues, "Yeah... this is my fault. Totally my fault. Of course it is," The sarcasm in my voice was blatant and disrespectful.
"Just listen to him, guys," Jay insisted, wanting us to give Stryker a chance.
Stryker nodded gratefully before speaking to Eddie and I, "Is it so wrong that there are people like Jay who may not wish to endure the existence of being a mutant? Is it so wrong that a choice exists, for him to even be a mutant?"
Eddie sneered at the man's intent, "You say that like being a mutant is wrong."
Reverend Stryker chuckled as though speaking to ignorant children, "If God intended for there to be mutants, would he have made your lives so hard? Would have have pitted you against a whole race?"
While Eddie seethed, I patiently waited Stryker out before eventually pointing to the skin on my arm, "This ain't the tree to be barking up with me," He could have replaced the word 'mutant' with 'black' and asked me all of those questions again. It would have sounded close to the same.
"I'm not the only person who feels the way I do!" Jay said, coming to Stryker's defense, "If being a mutant can be a choice it should be. The X-Men didn't have the right to take that choice away. Thanks to Reverend Stryker, they have that choice. We all do."
Eddie rolled his eyes, fed up at this point, "Who else? Who else could possibly not want their powers?"
Jay immediately shot back with an answer, "Kevin Ford on the Hellions, first of all."
Eddie paused at that, "...Okay, I'll give it to you on Wither. But that's just one."
"I know five more," Jay said firmly, pulling out the vial he'd stashed there earlier, "But Kevin wanted his powers gone more than anyone. When I told him I could get him a cure, he was so happy," He smiled and looked over at Stryker, "The look on his face when I gave him this, Reverend, you should have seen it. How could that be wrong?"
"And he took it?" Stryker asked, taking the tiny container.
Jay nodded, "We talked about it last night. When I gave it to him, he took it as soon as he could. He said he'd finally be able to dance with Laurie," He shrugged his shoulders, "I don't know if he got the chance, but next time he definitely will."
Eddie leaned back in the pew, his arms crossed, "If he took that cure, I don't think so," He said, to the confusion of Jay, "School for mutants, Icarus. The feds don't let humans go to Xavier's. If Wither isn't a mutant anymore, I don't think he'll be around for the winter dance."
I was looking much deeper than that, however, "Forget that. You straight-up screwed Kevin over. He doesn't have parents, Jay. He's a ward of the school. If he can't stay there, where's he gonna go?"
It was clear from Jay's stunned demeanor that he in fact hadn't thought about that. We did because we interacted with a lot of our friends, even our contemporaries on other squads like Kevin's Hellions. Jay was an introvert even when it came to his teammates on the New Mutants.
The scope of the situation sank in for Jay when Stryker chuckled. Without us noticing, he'd gotten up and moved closer to the pulpit, "Don't worry about your friend, Joshua. You did the right thing. It won't be a problem for him much longer."
With him getting up and away from us, I was on my guard, "What are you on about?"
"Do you boys know how the Hope Serum was created?"
Eddie had already gone over this outside with Jay, "An alien named Ord got some science lady to make it. Then a few months ago, the X-Men blew the production facility straight to hell. The end," He snapped.
"Do you know where it came from?" Stryker asked, "The antidote to the greatest pox God brought upon mutantkind - the Legacy Virus," He shook his head with a click of his tongue, "You X-Men do a poor job cleaning up after yourselves. The work of Dr. Kavita Rao, the woman behind the Hope Serum, started out by working with the Legacy Virus itself."
Just like that, I felt sick to my stomach. The Legacy Virus. The thing that had wiped out countless mutants only a handful of years ago. It turned mutants' own powers against them inside of their bodies. Eventually, it even mutated to the point where it affected people who weren't mutants.
Eddie went pale. Jay still didn't know what was going on, or at least he was in denial, "I-I don't understand what you're saying, Reverend."
Eddie leapt forward and angrily snatched Jay up by the collar of his shirt, "I do! You didn't give Kevin the Hope Serum, you gave him the mutant Black Plague!"
Jay's lip quivered. His gaze darted between Eddie and myself, "There's a cure though! The X-Men made it, didn't they?"
"This is a new strain," Stryker said, seemingly taking great pleasure in bringing more despair as he leaned over the podium, "And you only came back with one vial, Joshua. You gave it to more than just one mutant, didn't you?" He didn't answer, even when Eddie gave him a forceful shake. Not good, "The only real cure for being a mutant is to wash oneself in eternal hellfire. Fortunately, the new Legacy Virus will provide a headstart for those you've helped."
The doors flew open, with uniformed, armed Purifiers filtering in. By this point, I didn't bother waiting for gun barrels to be pointed at us. I shot first. Explosive blasts. No messing around here.
"Kill them!"
Stryker's shout was drowned out by my blasts and the return fire from the Purifiers. Eddie dragged Jay down behind the paltry cover of the pews. Stryker took the chance to slip away up a flight of stairs out of the line of fire.
"We have to get out of here, Sol!" Eddie shouted right next to my ear.
I felt offended by the suggestion, "I'm not running from Reverend fucking Stryker!" After all of this, we had the guy right by us. We couldn't do much about what he'd already put into motion, but we could go after him and make him pay for it.
"Okay, how about running from Reverend fucking Stryker and his legion of goons!?" Eddie yelled back. The man had a point.
I dropped down behind cover and sent the message I'd drafted for Saberwolf. A big chunk of seating near my head was splintered by a bullet. Eddie wasn't used to being shot at for real, but he was better adjusted to it than Jay, who looked ready to bolt into a hail of gunfire.
We needed some space.
I nudged Eddie and pointed straight up, gesturing to my own glowing hand. He nodded and waited for me to do my thing, which was to fire directly up, blowing a hole into the ceiling that he then quickly flew through. Jay was belly-down on the floor, so I kicked him, "Jay, go upstairs with Eddie! Through the hole!"
Jay snapped out of his mindset long enough to do as I asked. He flew slower than Eddie with his wings, and made for a much easier target, so I covered him in the meantime. That left me alone facing six gunmen. Not odds that I liked, but I didn't plan on staying for much longer. The ceiling was twenty feet up. I could have made that jump if there weren't a few guys with guns trained on the hole. The second I went for the jump, they would tear me to shreds.
They were beaten to the punch, however. Wolf sliced through the wall with his chainsaw, drawing all of the attention onto himself just long enough for me to pick off two guys. With their attention split, the remaining three were no match for Wolf's many bladed instruments. He tore hunks off of them in short order. It was quite bloody, but after being up close and personal to Laura's work on several occasions, I'd developed a bit of a tolerance to seeing people get filleted.
Wolf trotted over, tail waving in the air. I was very happy to see him, but still couldn't help but bust his balls, "Did you have to make it such a spectacle, drama queen?"
Smartass that he was, he responded in kind, "My apologies. Next time, I will leave you to fend for yourself," He would never. He knew he loved me, "Edward Tancredi and Joshua Guthrie are directly above us."
"Right. Let's go," Wolf took the lead, bounding up the cramped stairway nearby. A Purifier leaned out of the doorway at the top of the stairs and shot down at Wolf and I. Wolf's big metal frame absorbed the lion's share of the bullets, and I shot the man down before he could do any real damage, "Where's Stryker, Wolf?"
"I cannot detect humans," Wolf said as we entered another room where Purifiers were posted up waiting. The first sign of us they got resulted in their opening fire, "My sensors can only locate organisms with the X-gene."
"That explains why you don't tell me when there are guys with guns around the corner!" I snapped at him. I put down covering fire while Wolf leapt into action. Squishy humans weren't much of a match for him. Even for the ones with automatic weapons, their reflexes were too slow.
We came across a pair of Purifiers trying to force their way into a locked room. I lifted my index fingers and lasered them through the head. They never saw it coming. Wolf broke out his chainsaw and sliced through to the other side where Eddie and Jay were taking refuge. It looked like some kind of computer room, with several monitors and consoles connected to... something that wasn't there anymore. Did they clear something out before the fight started?
Eddie had a gun in his hand trained on the door, but put it aside when he saw Wolf and I, "Thank Christ. We've got to get ourselves out of here," He informed us.
That didn't make any sense to me, "What? You called Mister Rasputin before we even walked into this place. He should be here any minute."
Eddie shook his head, "Something's wrong. Something's really wrong," He held up his phone, "He told me we needed to hold out, that something was up back at the school," There was fear in his eyes, "Sol, no one's coming! We're on our own!"
"Okay. We do it ourselves then," The only choice we had if the cavalry wasn't coming. I pointed the way Wolf and I had just come from, "Go get a real gun from one of the guys outside."
Eddie started that way when he stopped and looked at the bodies crumpled on the floor, "Are they dead?"
That was right. Eddie had never seen me kill anyone before, "Better them than you two," I explained succinctly. Eddie squared the thought away for the time being and got a weapon with more kick to it.
Jay, meanwhile, was still shell-shocked by what had transpired, "This is all my fault. It's all my fault," He kept saying to himself.
I grabbed him and tried to nudge him Eddie's way, "Jay, go get a gun," No response. He didn't even look at me, "Damn it, he's fried. Wolf, stay close to him," I asked.
"Uh, Sol?" Eddie called out to me from the window. I moved over, keeping myself out of sight as much as possible while taking a look.
Reinforcements had arrived. And those reinforcements were reinforced. Three large, bulky powered exoskeletons, painted in camouflage.
Eddie started pacing the floor in exasperation, "Dudes in fucking Fallout-ass power armor!" He exclaimed, waving his gun around. I had to duck out of the way of it a few times, "We've got bootleg Iron Men stomping all over, dude!"
"Fuck this," I blew a gigantic hole through the roof. When in doubt, keep going up until they couldn't reach you, "Get on Wolf, we're getting out of here."
Saberwolf forced himself underneath Jay, while Eddie assumed the position on his back, "I don't know what those things are armed with."
Machine guns... probably missiles... maybe something bladed. As long as they didn't fly, I felt we'd be okay, "Get high up as fast as you can," I directed, "Hopefully they don't have anything that can reach past a certain point."
"Aye-aye," Eddie said, hovering Wolf off of the ground as he prepared to take all of us off, "Man... I made a real monkey's paw wish, didn't I?"
After wanting to be an X-Man for so long, the reality of how scary it could be was setting in. That was how it always went, and yet, I couldn't let it happen that way for Eddie. He'd always supported me, so I would return the favor.
I slapped him on the back hard to get him pumped up, "We've got this, Wingman."
Eddie took a deep breath, and then we went up. Straight up. Fast. I didn't even hear anyone open fire on us. It was so fast, I almost lost consciousness - like an elevator ride from hell. We stopped high in the air, to the point where the buildings of Westchester were dots. Then, without missing a beat, we took off for Xavier's.
Whatever was waiting for us there, we just had to be ready for it.
...For fuck's sake. Six hours ago, I was at Homecoming.