Episode 9

“I’m not doing that,” John returned fire back at Charles that matched the burning in his eyes. Charles stopped dead in his tracks and shot back a look of deep disdain that was thick enough to cut through stainless steel.  Their staring contest was briefly interrupted by the mechanical buzzing sound of the plasma screen being raised back up the ceiling. Charles once again reconnected his eyes to John’s.

“Heh, we had a feeling you might say that, son. Follow me.” Charles walked towards the doors and pushed them open, waiting for John to follow his orders. John shook his head with disgust as he made his way through the open doorway. As he followed him down the hall, Charles swung his head around to address the matter at hand.

“John, you have been given an extraordinary gift and your behavior has been reckless to say the least. Doesn’t it mean anything to you to know that you’ve been chosen? You truly are one of a kind, please don’t be like those that came before you.”

That statement rumbled around John’s thoughts for a few moments as he continued to stroll down the plainly grey painted hallway.

“How can I be one of a kind if there were others before me?”

“You’ve always got a question, don’t you?”

The rhetorical question was treated as such as they eventually reached a red painted door that read, “EMERGENCY STAFF ONLY.” Charles pressed the green button that was installed on the right side of the door and pushed it open after hearing a buzz that allowed him to do so. They both stepped through on even footing, but only John was shocked to see a distraught Jennifer lying against the boiler, being surrounded by masked physicians and nurses.

“What are you doing to her?! Get away from her!”

Charles stepped in front of him and blocked any progress by placing his arms on John’s chest. John took a few steps back and circled the room, breathing heavily and obviously furious.

“If you guys think that you’re going to get me to do whatever it is you want me to do by harming her, you’re fucking wrong!”

As soon as the words left his tongue, every medical assistant dropped what they were doing and left the room at once. Scalpels and torches, among other tools were left behind, resting on a tray. As John approached them, Charles followed suit and stood across from him, watching him inspect the tools that they had used on Jennifer, wincing at each instrument. Charles interjected before the words could even escape John.

“When will you understand that we are helping you? You don’t want to lose her, do you?” John glanced back at him, totally unconvinced of the talk he was receiving. “If she is as important to you as we feel she is, then you are ready now.”

“Ready? Ready for what? You guys… you know, you guys kill me. You sit here and you speak in riddles time and again, leaving more questions than answers, and then you say –“

“In due time, kid.”

“Yes, exactly! This due time crap! I’m tired of it!”

John made his way over to Jennifer and knelt down beside her, doing his best to comfort her. He tried to hug her but she pushed him away. Charles stood over the both of them.

“Come with me, we need to go over some things.”

John looked at Jennifer and she rose to her feet without even acknowledging him.

“What, so you’re mad at me now?!”

John stood up and followed the both of them into another secure room. As they stepped in, all that they had saw was corpses of people who had looked just like them, draped down in morgue sheets from the face down.

“You see, you have been chosen to respect and to fight for what all they have fought for,” he said, spreading his arms to show the vast amount of bodies that lay in front on them all. “It is your obligation and duty to end all of this, and we have put our full trust in you to do so.”

From the far exit, the doors swung open and Cyrus the Cyclops stomped through the facility with bare feet. He stepped in front of Charles and let out a roar that would have shaken a glacier free from any tundra it rested in. Both Charles and John were sent back against the wall from the sheer velocity of the scream. Jennifer knelt down unaffected from anything but the roar.

As Charles rose to his feet, he approached an exit at the far left side of the building. He pushed the doors open, allowing the cold winter breeze inside the bowels of the room.

“All of you are now ready, go forth and defend us like nobody before us.”

They all walked outside and into an uncertain fate, and similar mindsets.  The storm had not let up, and the wind was whipping fiercer than ever before.

Charles approached John and placed a map in his hands before walking back inside, shutting the doors behind him.

John turned to each of his companions.

“Ah, fuck.”