GENETIC ECLIPSE

Part III: A Trial of Pain

By Yannick Lamarre

Author’s Note: This story is continued from Apocalypse #8.

Lockheed flew around the city for what seemed to him like the thousandth time. His wings hurt with every movement they made, and he had trouble staying afloat, but he couldn’t give up. Kitty was in trouble. She had left him in the middle of the street, in her special bag he could travel in, and had litterally dissapeared.

Lockheed finally landed down on the rooftop of the apartment him and Kitty were now living in and looked up at the darknening sky. Stars were slowly popping up, and still there was no sign of his beloved Kitty anywhere. Where could she be?

Kitty slowly opened her eyes again, pain washing over her the instant her mind was conscious enough to realize it was in pain. It didn’t take long for her to realize where she was either. The abrupt memories of her torture at the hands of Apocalypse and at the hands of Dani, someone she considered her friend for a long time, washed over her, and she shook her head to get rid of them. It was time to think objectively. It was obvious they were trying to get something out of her. And it had something to do with Cable.

“Finally awake, are you?” said a male voice somewhere near her.

She hadn’t heard anyone walk in, and her immobile head limited her vision, but she guessed whoever it was around while she was unconscious.

“Yeah, being unconscious got boring,” she replied, waiting for whoever it was to show himself.

Her voice, she realized, sounded weaker then she liked. A face she recognized finally stepped into view. One of the Dark Riders… Trial, if her memory was serving her right. His body wasn’t completely human, some of its parts replaced by machines, which is why she’d been able to dispatch him easily enough back in New York.

“I don’t usually do this kind of work, so do forgive me if it hurts more then it should,” Trial said, working on some piece of equipment just outside her field of vision.

“So what are you doing down here anyways? Is Apocalypse giving you the dirty work as punishment for my beating you easily back in New York?” Kitty asked, taunting Trial.

Trial turned around with a sharp smile which Kitty didn’t much like. He approached her and slapped her with his metallic hand, making her entire head snap. She bit her tongue to stop herself from crying out in pain and looked up at Trial with fire in her eyes.

“Actually, if you must know, I asked to be put down here for a while. I’ve been working on ways to counteract your ‘phasing’ powers, but I need some of your DNA to do that correctly. So I thought I might as well go straight to the source. Of course, that COULD be avoided if you just told me what your connection to the Askani’son and the Twelve is…” Trial said, returning his attention to the piece of machinery he was working on.

Kitty noticed that it was looking more and more like an elaborate mini-laser, and that thought didn’t do much to encourage her.

“Even if I knew what you were talking about, I don’t betray friends,” she answered, knowing that saying this would only bring more pain.

Her knowing the answer to these questions, or so it seemed, was only half the reason she was being held here. The other reason Apocalypse himself had made clear – she was bait for the rest of the X-Men. For some reason, he wanted them to come crashing through his front door looking for her.

“There is much more at stake here that you realize, Shadowcat. This is the very next step in evolution which Apocalypse is planning, and the only thing, really, which poses a hint of nuisance to him are the Twelve and the rest of the X-Men, and now because of you he’ll deal with both in one strike. And only a few days before the big event in Washington!” Trial declared, activating his new weapon, and slowly turning it towards Kitty.

Kitty bit her inner lip to stop her from screaming when the ray would hit, but in her mind she was smiling. Without even realizing it, Trial had let slip one vital bit of information. She hadn’t thought he would have been the one to let it slip. She’d been looking forward to Tusk betraying something of his master’s plans, but not Trial. Maybe her phasing through him had really affected him.

“Well,” he said, facing her with a smile she cared nothing about, “shall we begin?”

The laser, now attached to his forearm, slowly began its work, and Kitty screamed out in pain, as her entire body seemed on fire, as if her very insides were burning. Trial smiled, apparently happy with his little invention.

‘He’s… not… even… asking… me… anything…’ Kitty thought confusely as her mind started drifting away from the pain…

Away…

Into the dark…

A dark, lonely apartment in one of the worst neigborhoods of New York. Jonathan Niles put in his key and opened the door to his current home, welcomed only by silence. Without a sound, he closed the door behind himself and walked in, turning on the only light in the place, in the kitchen.

He took a small piece of bread and ate it quickly. It would be his only meal today. He looked at his answering machine. No messages yet again today. It’d been two weeks since the last phone call. He took out his mail from the left pocket of his pants and threw it on the table. Nothing but tabloids and bills, and the special computer program he’d ordered. It was finally here. He picked it up and took it out of its box. Jonathan hurried to his computer and started it on, hearing the familiar ‘ping’ as the computer came alive.

“Finally…” he said, inserting it in his CD-ROM drive and sitting down on his only chair.

He started hitting a few keys, and soon the rest of the world faded away as once again his mind was absorbed by the computer screen in front of him. Who needed friends and lovers and families, when you had all you wanted right at your fingertips? Jonathan Niles smiled as the computer program came alive. Certainly not him.

Michael Ramsey sat on his comfortable couch, in his comfortable home, in his comfortable neighborhood, paralyzed with undecision and fear as he stared at the phone waiting beside him on a table. It hadn’t rung in hours, and yet it was threatening him.

“You still haven’t decided?” his roommate asked. He was an old childhood friend who had been lucky enough to actually get into the school Michael was shooting for.

“Shut up, Randy, I’m trying to gather some courage here,” Michael replied.

“Michael Ramsey, big heartbreaker, unable to decide whether to call a girl or not… I love this!” Randy teased.

“Says the Lonely One,” Michael said.

It was an old joke between the two of them that had been around ever since Michael’s first date. He was the heartbreaker, Randy was the Lonely One.

“Okay, I’m doing it,” Michael finally decided, picking up the phone and quickly dialing Kitty’s phone number before he could change his mind.

The phone rang once, and Michael held his breath. The phone rang twice, and he nervously began to scratch the couch. Then finally someone answered.

“Hello?” It was Melissa.

“Hey, Meli, it’s Michael. Is Kitty there?” he asked as calmly as he could.

“No, she’s not,” Melissa answered.

Michael frowned. Something was obviously wrong.

“Well, do you know when she’ll…?” he began to ask.

“No, I don’t.”

And then Melissa hung up. Michael did the same, and stared blankly at the wall in front of him.

“Okay… now what?”

Kitty was standing alone. Alone in a formless room. A dark room. She was walking, and yet she was going nowhere. Finally she stopped, and she looked around herself. Nothing but darkness. To the right, to the left, above and below, nothing but darkness.

“Swell,” she said, and her voice echoed in the darkness around.

And then a giant face appeared right before her, a face she knew. A face who looked straight at her with deep, sad, serious, angry eyes all at once.

“Cable!” she called out.

“I want you to know that I have selected you to be one of the Twelve,” Cable said, his eyes looking straight into hers even though they were ten times larger.

“NO!” she screamed out.

She had been through this scenario before. Her mind was playing this all over again for some reason.

“You can’t say no, Cat!” Cable replied, as he had in the restaurant before the Dark Riders had attacked her.

But this time the echo, instead of fading away, got louder and louder… “You can’t say no.” And what was that name he kept on calling her? ‘Cat’? What did it mean? Where did it come from? She and Cable had never been really close before. And he certainly had never called her ‘Cat’ before. Heck, she wasn’t sure he’d called her anything at all before now.

“It’s your fault this is happening to me!” she shouted at the giant Cable head, but instead of replying the head shrank and faded away, leaving Kitty alone again.

“This has something to do with what happened at the restaurant. For some reason Cable is the one who ‘selects’ people to be the Twelve…” she whispered to herself in the darkness.

But why her? And who were the others? What was their purpose? And why did Cable have to choose them? Who was he to impose that kind of responsability on others?

Kitty shook her head in the darkness, alone, wondering where she was anyway. She was feeling no pain, yet she felt like she should be. And suddenly around her, shadows of eleven other people appeared, surrounding her, strengthening her. The rest of the Twelve, she realized. But their forms were blurry, their figures unrecognizable. She didn’t know who they are. And suddenly, before the twelve of them, Apocalypse appeared, taller then she had ever seen him, his eyes setting down on her like the nozzle of two cannons.

“WHO ARE THE TWELVE?” his voice boomed, questionning.

She didn’t know the answer, but she knew who could give it to him now. The only one who really knew who the Twelve were was Cable. But she’d rather die then give Apocalypse that information.

“I WILL NEVER TELL YOU, APOCALYPSE! THE SECRET OF THE TWELVE WILL NEVER BE YOURS TO KNOW!” she screamed at him, full of defiance.

And suddenly she snapped awake, still restrained, but with a renewed will to fight. She would find a way to get out of here. Kitty Pryde would not die here. That she knew now. She had a much more important destiny ahead. Friends to return to… a life to start again…

Read X-Men #11, Uncanny X-Men #15, X-Men #12, & Apocalypse #9 for parts 4-7 of Genetic Eclipse!

NEXT ISSUE: Genetic Eclipse Part 8! Kitty manages to escape her torture chamber and is on the loose in the very center of Apocalypse’s operations. And she discovers there no less then the very plans of just what the immortal mutant is planning… what is that deadly plan? And will Kitty be able to escape in time to warn everyone else? Plus: who is the mysterious shadow who has infiltrated Apocalypse’s base?