Part 19- ‘So Long and Goodnight’
Bishop woke up suddenly, disorientated and aching with pain he stared at the now useless stumps that were his fingers and toes. How he had fallen asleep at all amazed him, his wide horror filled eyes turned to stare at the tray of instruments that was still positioned perversely close to his strapped down body.
He squinted, straining to keep his eyes open and his gaze fixed, the pain caused bright spots to shoot across his every senses, the sadistic bitch had cut off his pinkie fingers on both hands as well as the toes on both feet, she had cauterized the wounds with a screaming blowtorch, burning, singing and sealing the flesh in a show of triumphant brutality.
She had not stopped there, she had burned the flesh off every single one of his fingers including the broken middle finger, effectively rendering every single digit and consequently both his hands useless.
It would take years and months of painful surgery to correct the damage she had imposed, that was if she actually let him live long enough.
The smell of burnt flesh hung in the air, pervaded his every senses, mingling with the stink of his stale sweat and the urine that now stained his legs and had come from his fast emptying bladder.
He struggled through the odours, through the sensation of his defunct digits, his brain not quite accepting, latching to the sensation of phantom limbs, holding onto the belief that he still had every one of his fingers.
Bishop gritted his teeth at the sight of the bloodied saw, and the gleaming scalpel to settle finally on the now empty syringe, of course, the truth serum, Sodium Pentothal; she had emptied the vial into him that’s why he had fallen asleep suddenly.
Every thing he knew about the drug explained what had had happened, Sodium Pentothal had no colour, odour, or taste and the victim never remembered the ‘heart to heart’ talk they would have with the interrogator, all they would remember was, like him falling asleep suddenly.
The events of the last hour crowded in on him, he groaned, his head had been pinned down, held fast by a huge beast of a man, hairy and with sharp fang-like teeth, the animal had growled at him as he had gripped his head in a vice like hold, huge hands that pushed his head back into the steel gurney.
She had climbed atop his lap once more, forcing his mouth open she had injected him in the tongue, ramming the needle deep into the flesh, the drug passed fastest through the muscle of the tongue and directly into the bloodstream. More importantly injections into a tongue left no mark, should a body be dumped and a post-mortem performed the coroner would find no trace of an injection.
He knew all this because how many had he tortured in a similar way, how many interrogations had he overseen, how many had he sanctioned, enough to realise that payback was indeed a bitch.
She had injected him with the truth serum; it was the last thing he remembered, how much had he disclosed and what secrets had she wormed out of him? She had wanted everything; he had pretty much spilled his guts during the torture, and in the end her use of the serum must simply have been to corroborate all that he had already said.
Oh god, what had he said…? Location…the nature of the project, those involved…what else? Everything and enough to justify that wide grin she wore as she stood over him.
She smiled down at him, leaning close she ran her fingers down his chest coming to rest on the ugly scar splayed across his lower gut. ‘Nice scar Bishop…a few inches lower and you’d been marching in a whole different sort of parade.’ She chuckled softly against his ear, her fingers splaying teasingly close to his cock. ‘How does the Mardi Gras in New Orleans sound…?’
He twisted his head away from her, the perfume she wore was overpowering, and her soft blonde locks brushing against his shoulder offered a gentleness that belied her vicious nature.
‘That’s something we have in common Bishop, we’ve both got the same man to thank for our little scars…’
Logan sat at alone in a booth facing the door, the last thing he needed right now was being caught off guard. He reached into his back pocket and emptied the contents of his sodden and water logged wallet on the table in front of him.
A handful of folded wet dollar bills tumbled out as well as the false ID cards Eddie had made up for them. He gritted his teeth at the thought of his former friend, a sense of paranoia overtaking him.
He looked around him uneasily; aside from a trucker at the counter and an old man sat in the corner, the diner was near empty and no wonder, the back alleys had to be a cleaner place to eat than this. The table he sat at was stained with coffee and as sticky as the unwashed floor.
The seats torn and faded, the cheap leather having long lost any class it may have once upon a time had. His gaze shifted to the counter and the cooking area, a thin wiry greasy haired man was cooking up something that looked as bad as it smelled. A thick viscous brown liquid oozed off the spoon he stirred the heavy pot with.
The tiles behind the supposed cook were stained yellow with grease, this place had health hazard written all over it, the only reason Logan supposed it had escaped being shut down was because it was so far out of the way.
Still he was desperate; he had hiked along the river for the best part of the day and now barely managed to keep himself from growling at the large, chain smoking foul smelling waitress that sidled over to him. A cigarette hanging from the corner of her mouth, the end fell from it onto the table in front of him as she simply leaned close and brushed the ash away and onto the floor.
Logan grimaced, pissed off, hungry and tired he might have been, but fuck it if he was gonna eat here, he ordered a coffee, black, hot and strong, deciding that maybe drinking a simple coffee wouldn’t prove as big a risk as the food.
She stared down at the sodden notes, his dirty and torn jeans then decided she wasn’t going to budge, ‘look lady…’ he spat through gritted teeth, ‘all I want is a coffee and some change to use the phone.’ He nodded towards the payphone hanging in the corner, perhaps the only good thing about the damn place.
He held up a soaked twenty dollar bill at her, ‘It’s still green, still got the face of a dead president, so how ‘bout ya do us both a favour, take the money, stick it under that damn rat-infested grill ya got and dry it out. But jus’ get us that damn coffee first.’
She wavered still, one eyebrow raising slowly, the ash on the end of her cigarette building again as she took a long drag, the smoke billowing out of her nose.
Logan fought the urge to flex his hands and extend the claws, he stared up at her, ‘I’m gonna trust ya know what it is to have a shitty day, well believe me lady I’ve had a really shitty couple of days.’
She relented at last and taking the money he offered shuffled back to the counter, she came back with a pot of coffee, a dirty mug and a handful of change all of which she plunked heavily onto the table. She walked away without a word and Logan helped himself to pouring the coffee, taking a long swig he scowled, given the goddamn awful taste of the thing he wondered if he was wrong and it was possible to get some form of food poisoning from bad tastin’ coffee and the bits that were floating on top.
Gathering up the contents of his wallet, he stared a while at Marie’s ID, smiling wryly he shook his head, it was crazy how much had changed over the past half year since she had left the Academy. Had he not known her then he doubted he would recognise her now, in appearances, her attitude, her concept of survival, all of that she had adapted to every situation, working in a bar, fighting off sleazebags more than twice her size, drinkin’ and takin’ what she wanted, whenever she wanted.
And if that had meant a quick fuck in a back alley she had done even that, fuckin’ without caring, taking what she wanted from the assholes.
He had met her when she was just sixteen, nothin’ but a scared kid runnin’ from a world that had turned upside down and inside out for her. Still she had trusted an animal like him to keep her safe, trusted him enough to climb into the back of his trailer changing both their lives.
From the moment he had met her, something in him had been awakened, an urge, a need to protect, to keep this girl safe, a sense of responsibility and a long buried hope of belonging. He had drifted halfway across the country and back again, and the only time he had moved beyond the idea that he was socially inept was when he was alongside her. With her the loneliness had ebbed, the gruffness eased and he thought he had found a kindred soul.
Their mutations hadn’t always sat easy with them, he had slowly come to adapt and accept the heavy adamantium burned into his very soul, made peace with the Wolverine in inside, but not for her. She, Marie had woken and stumbled headfirst into what she felt was a nightmare and a curse, her mutation, the Rogue inside she had fought to cut away, to cure, but even that hadn’t been enough.
And now their fucked up situations seemed to get more dangerous and crazier by the minute, soldiers, guns and the voices Marie was hearing. The other side of her, the personality that had confronted him, had pushed Marie back into the darkened recesses of her mind and had taken over.
That had been real, she had been real, but Marie had said that the Professor had been talking to her as well, could that have been real as well? Could it simply have been some sort of illusion on her part, an act of subconscious longing that had brought back for a few moments in their desperate seconds a man they both admired?
Logan shook his head, it seemed so unlikely, the Professor was dead, there had been a memorial service, and he had watched it all from the window of his room.
He remembered everything about that day, the way the sun had shone so perversely bright, the students gathered on the lawn as Storm gave her tearful obituary. He had watched, caught Marie’s gaze as she looked up to where he was stood, knowing what she was thinking, knowing that though she mourned the Professor alongside her friends, the question was sat in the back of her mind, the idea of a cure for what was her poisonous skin. Her gloved fingers had tightened around Bobby’s hand as she had held his gaze.
He had refused to answer her questions then, had failed to stop her wondering, hadn’t seen it as his place to stop her, realising now as he sat in the grubby diner, that even if he had, if he had told her it was bad idea, had stopped her when she had asked him what she needed to do, had held her close and stopped her walking out that door to get the cure, to be fixed, she still wouldn’t have listened.
Days or weeks later, she would have gone to the clinic all the same, and this time not bothering to ask him for an opinion. She had told him as much before they’d been driven off the bridge, ‘fucked up twenty-twenty hindsight ya got Logan’ she’d said; some things are beyond your control.
Shoving the wallet into the back of jeans he pushed the coffee aside and strode over to the phone. He stared at the handset, debating if this really was such a good idea. Gripping the receiver tightly he slotted the coin and began to dial. He cursed under his breath as the phone on the other end rang a few times before being answered by a familiar voice.
Bishop sat huddled in the back of the van, pushed down onto the floor he nursed his deformed hands in his lap as the jolting of the van bounced him around. Naked still and cowering at the feet of the huge animal like man that had held him down earlier in the lab, he whimpered unable to stop the images racing through his mind as he panicked about what she would do to him next.
The huge brute of a man had picked him up easily and thrown him into the back of the van, she was driving and sat beside her was a third, a strange hunched figure of a man with a sneering smile. He had stood and watched as she had injected him a second time, the sharp needle once more pushed into the fleshy part of his tongue.
They sat in the front now as the van slowly wound around what must have been a dirt track. They stopped at last and the back doors were pulled open, Bishop was pulled from the van and out into the cool night air.
He winced as the cold hit his naked flesh, his teeth chattering slightly he tried to stand but found his feet had gone numb. She grabbed him by the hair and pulled him to his feet, dragging him across the deserted road she took him to the edge of the track.
She then turned him around so he overlooked the line of trees. They were stood at the top of a steep valley, the sides running almost vertically downwards, embedded by thick growing trees and boulders, at the end he could see a busy highway, cars flowing in both directions, the white headlights merging into the red of taillights as the traffic flowed effortlessly.
She turned him around so that his foot was on the edge of the road balancing precariously, dangerously close to the sharp drop below. Once more Bishop found he had to be propped up, held up either side by the animal and the hunched man with the strange smile.
She stood in front of him her blonde locks caught by a breeze and her hands on her hips. She smiled at him as she shape shifted, Bishop could only stare wide eyed as she transformed, her clothes disappearing into blue scales, the hair changing to pitch black and her eyes to a frighteningly bright yellow.
‘How do you like me now Bishop?’ She asked him.
He stared at her, amazed at not only her appearance but the growing numbness that seemed to be creeping slowly up his body, he couldn’t feel his legs…Oh God, he couldn’t feel his legs. His panicky breath came in short rasps as the paralysis reached his waist.
‘You feel it don’t you Bishop, that numbness? That slow crippling feeling that’s creeping up on you. It’s my best cocktail yet…’ She reached up and whispered in his ear, ‘told you I was getting a taste for it.’
His breathing grew more laboured, a burning sensation gripping his insides, every organ seemed to be on fire, and she held his chin firmly as she looked him square in the eye. ‘Pancuronium bromide…it blocks all voluntary muscles slowly, including the lungs and diaphragm…everything is shutting down Bishop, your legs, arms, lungs and eventually your heart and brain.’
She took a few steps backwards away from him, ‘but wait…’ she held up her finger for emphasis, shape shifting once more she transformed into the very likeness of Bishop himself!
The hair, skin, eyes and down to the military uniform itself she was the very mirror image of him, he fought to keep from retching, his head lolling forward, his eyes rolling in the back of his head, his head was yanked back and he was staring into her eyes once more.
She spoke and she even sounded exactly like him, ‘It wouldn’t be a cocktail without the fun stuff, a few cherries and maybe a little pink umbrella…,’ she laughed and the brittle brutal sound echoed, ‘I also added a touch of rat poison, with a super duper dose of Warfarin of course…’
Pressing her face close to his, she smiled hissing as she spoke, ‘you know what Warfarin does right Bishop…it’s an anticoagulant. You’re gonna bleed out, you’re going to drown in your own blood, every single capillary will burst and you’ll choke on your own blood. ‘But you see that trail of cars…’ she pointed towards the busy road, ‘that’s the main highway, you manage to crawl up there you’ll be able to get some help, that is if you manage to live that long…’
Saying that she pressed her lips against his, a gentle kiss that belied her viciousness, ‘Now you’re going to know what it means to be so helpless, just like I did with that damn cure of yours, let me tell you something….’ She glared at him, ‘it burns Bishop, it never stops burning.’
His whole body encased in numbness she had nothing to do but push him slightly with her middle finger, her two companions released his arms and he fell backwards over the edge, tumbling head over heels she watched as he rolled down the steep valley, bouncing against trees and boulders.
Pressing her palm flat against her lips she blew a kiss at him as he disappeared into the darkness, ‘so long and goodnight Bishop.’
She stepped back and smiled widely at her two companions, Sabretooth and Toad, still in Bishop’s guise she twirled around on the spot for them.
‘Well boys…how do I look?’ she asked them smirking.
Toad circled around her, his smile wide and leering, ‘Just perfect…’ he replied his long tongue whipping out and tasting the air.
She grabbed at it, smacking him away, her eyes narrowed and her expression angry, ‘Yeah, well best keep your tongue to yourself Toad, or we aren’t going to be able the same about you.’
He fell backwards, spitting, a smug Sabretooth laughing at him, ‘Fine…’ he hissed, ‘we all know you only get a hard on for one man.’
Mystique smiled, ‘Mmmm Logan…, now that reminds me, mustn’t forget the scar…’raising her shirt she concentrated and watched as a wide ugly scar grew and splayed across her lower gut. Now she was the very mirror image of Bishop. ‘First step infiltration…then we find Magneto.’
The soon to be deceased Bishop had been very helpful, giving her facts, information, location and everything else she had needed. Ironic really Bishop, the expert in torture had pissed in his pants and given up every secret he had when it was him under the knife. Mystique grinned, Bishop would have cursed the bitch whore of a mother who had brought him into this world had she asked him to.
She had no doubt he would die before he ever made it to the highway, by burning the skin from his fingers she’d ensured his body would never be identified, not least by a set of fingerprints. The fall would do enough of a number on his face, just another John Doe.
‘Wanna tell me again why we’re setting out to rescue the old man who abandoned us and effectively screwed us over...?’ Toad asked.
Mystique stared down at him, ‘Simple, so I can have the pleasure of killing the bastard myself...’
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Author's Chapter Notes:
Sorry for the delay had to do my research into toxins...poor Bishop