X-Men: Dark Mirror

by Marjorie M. Liu

  "He said the same thing to me about Mindy, that I should take precautions, that she might go wacko. Can you believe that?"

  "Mindy?" He sounded shocked. "What the hell?"

  "Exactly. I didn't do it, either. Maguire doesn't know everything."

  "He predicted Jeff. You should have heard him, too. He even talked different."

  "Whatever. That shot'll keep him down until tomorrow. Let the day shift handle the rest of his shit"

  "Yeah," said the man, though he did not sound happy about it.

  They left. Scott listened to the quiet footfalls fade into silence. The old hospital ticked and creaked around him; somewhere distant, another person cried out. A woman, this time. She sounded like she was having a nightmare. Maybe she would wake up on her own, maybe not Scott knew what that was like.

  He peered around the corner at the door. The lights were off in this section of the hall; a money saver, to only light every other corridor. Hoping no one else would return, Scott left his hiding place. Exploring the hospital no longer seemed as important as the troublesome patient inside that room, because if he had been body-snatched, then why not the rest of his team?

  You're drawing too many conclusions. You need facts.

  And he had one: The hospital employees had been surprised by the patient's behavior. Something about this "Jeff' was different, and though it might be nothing more than a chemical imbalance, Scott had to check it out. He could not take the chance that he might be passing up a friend—or his wife. He desperately hoped Jean was okay.

  The door was locked, but he still had his little wire. He worked fast.

  The room he entered was far bleaker than the one he had awakened in. There was no furniture, no comforts of any kind. In the middle of the cracked dirty floor lay a large man. Dark skin, dreadlocks. Straitjacket pulled tight. There was some blood at the corner of his mouth.

  Scott crouched beside the limp figure, studying that face, wondering if this was stupid, how it could be possible that anyone he knew was trapped inside that body.

  You re inside a woman, he reminded himself. It's possible.

  Cautious, listening for any movement outside in the hall, Scott crouched beside the man. "Hey" he said, shaking that thick shoulder. "Hey ... Logan?"

  Hey, nothing. Scott sighed. This was a dead end, at least until the man—Jeff—woke up. Until then, he had to keep moving, try to figure out why and how he was here. Maybe even fulfill the intent of his mission and discover if there were mutants being kept against their will.

  Ha, ha. Funny.

  Scott left the room with its sleeping man. He did not look back.

  The thing about institutions of any kind—orphanage, nursing home, mental hospital—was that the staff always gossiped about the individuals in their care. It was inevitable, the best catharsis available, and even though such discussions were discouraged so as to prevent any potential mean-spiritedness, Scott knew all too well that it was impossible to curb a tongue in need of wagging. As a child, he himself had been the focus of adult gossip, sometimes pleasant—sometimes not. He knew how the game was played.

  Which meant that just before dawn he returned to his room and waited for the staff to come check on him. It was difficult, but Scott was good at being patient, at waiting on moments. He had excellent control.

  There was sunlight streaming through his window when the door finally rattled and a woman entered. She was short and plump, with a round dark face and squinting eyes. She gave the impression of being difficult, rough, but she smiled when she saw Scott and her voice was loud and cheerful as she said, "Good morning, Mindy. How did you sleep?"

  Mindy. Scott remembered that name. He said, "I slept fine, thank you."

  The woman's smile disappeared and she stared at him, unblinking. Scott thought, Oh no, and tried to look dumb.

  "You talked," she said.

  Scott said nothing. He looked down at his hands, folded primly in his lap. He wished he knew how Mindy usually sat, her expressions and behavior. He did not want any special attention, no trouble. He did not want to be the focus of the gossip he so desperately wanted to hear.

  The woman drew near. "Mindy," she said, and placed her hands under Scott's chin to force his head up. He refused to look into her eyes. Shy, he thought. Maybe this Mindy is shy.

  "Mindy," she said again. "Say something else." Scott stayed silent, and after a long moment the woman sighed, releasing him with a shove. "Yeah, you be stupid for another day. Suits you fine, I guess."

  It did suit him, just fine. Scott glanced at the tag on her uniform. palmer, it said, in big letters. Nurse Palmer.

  "Come on." She stepped back from the bed. "Dr. Maguire wants you supervised while he's on vacation, but I don't have time for that. You just follow your routine, Mindy, and we won't have a problem. Right? Go on, now. Get washed up and then head down to the recreation room. They've got music there today."

  Scott did not need to be told twice, though he was circumspect in his movements, trying to take on an air of quiet timidity that he hoped was like the real Mindy. He had a feeling he was doing a lousy job. Though he did not look at Nurse Palmer, he felt her studying him, and her scrutiny made him uncomfortable.

  She did not say anything, though, and when Scott shuffled down the hall toward the women's bathroom—a door he had passed, and almost entered, during his nighttime excursion—Nurse Palmer turned and strode away in the other direction. She unlocked the door next to Scott's room, and entered with much the same greeting.

  At least you know more than you did before. Even if it was not much, although if Nurse Palmer's reaction was any indication, Mindy had a completely nonthreatening reputation that meant he could run circles around the hospital and its staff and not get into very much trouble.

  The bathroom felt more like a locker room, complete with open showers and toilet stalls. The air smelled warm, moist. Scott looked at himself in the long mirror above the sinks.

  His first reaction was to shout, to close his eyes—and indeed, some strangled sound did pass his lips, though his gaze never wavered from the fine feminine features staring back at him from the mirror. Pale skin, high cheekbones framed by short black hair. Brown eyes. Mindy's face looked Asian; Chinese, perhaps. She was ... pretty.

  He shuddered, finally looking away. He could not stand to see himself, to gaze through those strange eyes and know who he was, trapped inside a stranger's body. It was too surreal, too disturbing. He felt lost. Mortal, even, in a way he never had before. It was the ultimate violation, a stripping away of the illusion that he had any control over his life, his body.

  He turned and walked to the toilets. His bladder hurt. It was not easy, relieving himself, but he managed.

  He washed his hands, his face—trying so hard not to look at himself again—and then left the bathroom. He followed his memories of the blueprints, walking down the long corridor until he found a wide set of stairs. Scott heard voices; the hospital was waking up. Indeed, by the time he reached the first floor, the halls were already filled with shuffling, talking, weeping, staring, bodies. Nurses and security guards mingled among the patients, but many of the staff gathered at various stations located throughout the corridor. Most looked tired; they clutched mugs of coffee and watched the patients with dull eyes.

  The most alert employees seemed to be located at the nurses' station across from the recreation room, which also doubled as the dining hall. A small line of patients stood before a utilitarian service line, holding trays and taking food from several women who stood behind a low stainless-steel wall. Scott's stomach growled. He got in line.

  'To, yo, yo," muttered the short man in front of him. He had wild hair and bulging eyes, hollow cheeks covered in a light beard peppered with silver. "Yo, Mindy. You got a pencil on you?"

  Scott said nothing and the man whispered, "Yo, shit. Shit, shit, shit. Mindy, you got some shit on you?" He began laughing, loud, with a hint of hysteria.

  "Shut the hell up," someone said.
A woman. Scott turned, and had to look up to see the tanned face, the hard green eyes and unforgiving mouth. He felt very short.

  The woman smiled, tight-lipped, and looked over

  Scott's head at the—now silent—heckler. He clutched his tray to his chest and swallowed hard.

  "Yeah," she said softly. "Yeah, you be quiet now. Got that?"

  He nodded. Scott would have nodded, too, if he was that man. This woman looked like she could break him in half and smoke on his bones for breakfast Which made him wonder.

  "Logan?" he asked. The woman gave him a strange look.

  "When did you start talking? And no, I'm no Logan." She shoved her finger into Scott's shoulder. "Do I look like a man?"

  Scott shook his head and turned quickly away. He picked up a tray and took the plastic-wrapped egg and biscuit sandwich handed to him by one of the cooks. She also gave him an apple and a box of orange juice. Finger foods only, apparently. No silverware, no sharp pointy objects.

  "Hey!" The woman held up her sandwich and stared at the cook. "Thought I told you girls I'm a vegetarian."

  She received no response. Scott got the feeling this was something they heard on a regular basis. The woman muttered and nudged Scott with her elbow. "Come on. Freaks are animal murderers. One of these days I'll make them into chop suey and see how they like eating it."

  Which might be difficult, seeing as how they would presumably be dead when she was through with them. Scott did not point that out. He dutifully followed the taller woman as she led him to an empty plastic table by the window. The chairs were also plastic, covered in vibrant colors that distracted Scott. His eyes hurt, looking at those chairs, but he felt hunger, too, for the rich variety of blue and green and yellow. Jean sometimes let him see the world through her eyes, but this was better. He had forgotten how clear and sharp the color yellow could be, that snap of green shine in the apple.

  The woman snagged the only red chair—a red that was better, richer, with more variance and warmth than he remembered—and went to another table to grab a second of the same color for Scott. She pushed away all the other chairs until they clogged the walking space around their table. Some of the patients gave her dirty looks; the rest did not seem to care or notice.

  "Red's best," she said, turning her chair around so that she straddled it. "Red is hot. It's like fire."

  Scott nodded, unwrapping his breakfast. Red was good, except when it was the only color you could count on seeing for the rest of your life.

  He glanced around the dining room. He would have preferred to sit closer to the nurses' station; all the good gossip would be there, every little complaint and nu- anced praise. If any of the patients were acting .unusual, that was the best place to find out. Still, he did not want to upset the woman, and she seemed to like ... Mindy. A couple minutes, then. Surely she would get bored with him before long.

  But she did not get bored, and over the next half hour proceeded to tell Scott everything about herself, smoothly, and with enough practice that she sounded rehearsed, like the words spilling out of her were tradition, some game she played, like—last night they made me go around in the circle and say my name is Rachel, like I'm a Gemini, which means I'm nuts, and yeah, I showed them my scars, said "see these scars, these scars on my arm," and no that's not from drugs, stupid, not from anything like that, because it was done to me here, you know, like they give you all this medicine in your ass, just go JABBING it in when they want you to calm down, but I ask nice so they give it to me in the arm or with pills, you know, to help me think better, which is such shit because I think just fine, really just fine, and they're a bunch of meat-eating Nazis in this place and why the hell are you eating that egg, Holy Crap, they turned you into one of them, Mindy, give me that trash, don't put that in your body—which meant that all Scott got was a scrap of biscuit and an apple, and that was enough to make him irritated.

  He was just getting ready to give up and switch tables, when Rachel looked behind him, frowned, and said, "That's weird."

  Scott, at this point uncaring about how the real Mindy would and would not act, turned in his chair to look. He did not see anything out of the ordinary, and said, "Who?"

  Rachel stared at him. "You are talking."

  Scott ignored that. "Who is acting weird?"

  Rachel, still looking like the Antichrist was speaking out of Mindy's mouth, said, "Renny. He's like you. Doesn't talk worth shit. But he's over there now, chatting up a love storm with little blond Betty."

  Scott looked, and sure enough he saw a slender dark- skinned man leaning over the shoulder of an older blond woman. She was smiling, he was smiling, and Scott thought they both looked like they were having far too much fun to be one of his X-Men. Surely, if one of his team had been kidnapped, they would not be using this as an excuse to flirt.

  Yeah, right He stood up. Rachel said, "What the hell?"

  Scott said, "I'll be back," and he walked over to the man called Renny. He was peripherally aware of the nurses watching from their station, and remembered the conversation he had overheard the previous night. The doctor had asked that Mindy be carefully observed, something the graveyard shift had scoffed at. Maybe the day shift scoffed, too, but Scott still felt their hard gazes. He was most likely giving them something to talk about now. Mindy was acting out of character.

  Scott got close enough to hear Betty giggle and say, "I love your new accent," and then he was right up against Renny's side, and the man looked down into Scott's eyes and there was a gleam there, this hint of a smile that was so familiar it made him wonder about souls and personalities and too many other existential matters-that he had no time for, and Scott said, "Kurt?"

  Teeth flashed. A slender hand reached up to touch the tip of a brown round ear. "Ja, it's a miracle. . . .Scott?"

  "How did you know?" He grinned, unable to stop himself from looking so happy. He was happy, thrilled to finally know he was not alone in this place.

  'The face is different, but something else remains."

  Kurt smiled, clapping his hand on Scott's shoulder. He drew him away from Betty, who watched them leave with a pout. "It is good to see you."

  "We need to find the others," Scott said, quieter. "Assuming, of course, that we're all here."

  "It would make no sense to take only two of us, especially us two. We are strong, Scott, but not quite as threatening as Jean, Rogue, or Logan. No, no. The others must be somewhere near."

  "Any idea how this happened?"

  Kurt shook his head. It was disconcerting to see this stranger speak and act with Kurt's mannerisms, but Scott pretended it was the work of an image inducer, that their new bodies were a hologram, some odd camouflage hiding their true selves. It was easier that way, though not terribly honest.

  Kurt's gaze flickered, which gave Scott enough warning to turn. Rachel was approaching fast. She looked intense.

  "A friend?" Kurt asked mildly. Scott did not have time to answer. Rachel stopped in front of him with her fists planted on her hips and an ugly tilt to her hard mouth.

  "You've been holding out on me," she said. "Bitch."

  "I don't understand," Scott said.

  "All this time you could talk and you never said anything to me? And now, with this lowlife, you're all coochy-coo? After all I've done to help your ass? Screw that. I'm sorry, but that's firickin' rude."

  "Wait," Scott said. "Rachel-"

  She took a swing at him. Scott blocked the blow, instinct pouring through foreign muscles, making them work in ways they were not accustomed. Mindy was not a physically strong woman; Scott had to readjust, but he was too slow—Rachel got in one good blow, straight to his gut. He heard shouting, Kurt's accent in an unfamiliar voice, and then white—white uniforms gathering, pushing, and Rachel screaming obscenities as she was carried to the ground, slammed on her stomach with her face pressed into linoleum and the back of her jammies yanked down so that some woman could stick a needle into her pasty backside.

  And then Kurt
was there, helping Scott to his feet. Behind them, a woman laughed. Low, soft, and sweedy sensual. Familiar.

  "Sugah, sugah," said a raspy voice, which was not as recognizable. "I knew if I looked for a fight, I'd find you boys."

  Scott and Kurt turned. Rogue smiled.

  3

  Rogue, of course, looked like a stranger. She was tall and sinewy, with a weather-beaten face that was all hard wrinkles and light scars. A fighter's face, with gray eyes and short-cropped silver hair. Her body was lean— no soft curves, no youthful figure, just some breasts and narrow hips. But her laugh, that smile ...

  It was eerie, how much of Rogue came through on the stranger, as though the woman he knew and valued as a friend had become a ghost pressed to flesh; insubstantial, but with enough presence to be seen by a keen eye. Scott did not think the same could be said of him. At least, he hoped not.

  "Kurt," Rogue said, staring at the man who had been Renny. "I know that accent anywhere."

  "I'm Scott," Scott said, unsure she would recognize the person behind Mindy's face. His stomach hurt like hell. Rachel packed a hard punch. He wondered if he felt the pain more intensely because of his new body; he never remembered his old scuffles hurting quite this much.