Shifting Sands -- The Lone Wolf And The Goddess
story by D. Briganti
written by Valegra
The big man in the
orange trench coat stared at the broken window with a vengeful gleam in his
eyes. His fists were balled tightly in his pockets. Around him the broken
tables had been replaced with new ones. The occupants of the bar were going
about their drinking affairs as if the past evening hadn’t happened. As if they
hadn’t tried to take part in the an attempted murder. But then to them the female
mutant wasn’t considered an issue to worry over. To them she was nothing,
barely worth the dirt beneath their shoes. This was the attitude amongst the
members of the town near the F.O.H. compound and anyone that disagreed,
disappeared. This thought had Rex sneering, pleased with the way things were.
But then the sight of the woman flying out of the bar window superposed all
others and his small smile turned back into a fierce frown.
A younger man with dark
spiked hair, dressed in military pants and vest, put a hand on his shoulder.
"Stop thinkin’ ‘bout that mutant witch, Rex. She ain’t worth it. And
anyhows, the Big B wants to see you. It probly ain’t a good idea to keep him
waitin’. You know it puts him in one of those unpleasant moods of his."
Rex turned to face him,
grunting his agreement. "No stinkin' mutant has ever Left this place out
of a coffin! You understand what I'm sayin', Anthony? Not one! It ain’t ever
happened. And I’ll be damned if some white haired freak of nature is just gonna
fly outta here like a....a disgustin', big FLY!" Rex agitation over the
entire incident was very apparent. It was in the way he spoke; the words he
used. It was in the way he stood; tense and expectant. And it was in the way he
moved; chopped and precise.
Anthony, used to Rex’s
tempers, shrugged. "You're takin' this thing too personally, Rex. If I
were you, I wouldn’t think of this as a failure. Those people are unpredictable
and hardly ever fight fair. ‘Sides there was a Sentinel sent after her by the
guys at the Underground Installation. The machine should have killed her twice
over by now with a single blow considering the blood loss caused by that hole
in her shoulder. Now, let's go!"
"Yeah, yeah," Rex
mumbled as he followed his companion out of the bar. The
reminder of the wound that
he’d inflicted on the woman reminded him of his own wound; the newly patched
knife slit in his arm, not deep but definitely felt. Actually, he wasn’t
surprised that the bossman had called on him. Rex had been expecting the
summons. Contrary to what Anthony believed, this would be considered a failure.
He’d been given a job and he sure as hell should have seen it through to the
end.
The two men walked a short
distance to the only grocery store in the town. At mid day the store was open.
The two walked in and headed to the back of the sparsely stocked building until
they came to a brown door with a small slit. Written in large red letters was a
warning against any admittance. Upon reaching the door Rex pulled a photo of a
small child out of his trench coat pocket. A panel behind the slit in the door,
slid aside revealing a pair of suspicious blue eyes. Rex recognized the guy
immediately. Looking over his shoulder to make sure no one was watching, he put
the window to the slit.
"I've lost my son.
Have you seen him?" He asked of the man with the blue eyes.
"You're lucky, sir. I
found him, he's waiting for you inside," the blue eyed man answered
promptly. Following the statement was a series of what sounded like bolts being
drawn. When the door opened, Rex and Anthony stepped through.
The room the two men
entered was made completely of steel. There was no furniture. Only a large
screen covering the back wall, an instrument panel before it. The large monitor
was on and centered within it was a figure that could hardly be called a man.
Half of his head was nothing more than cybernetic parts as was half of his
body. The eye staring from the metal plate was black without a pupil. The half
of his mouth not covered was turned down in a frown. Sitting comfortable in a
large steel chair, the back covered with a red cloth, the image watched as Rex
and Anthony stepped forward. When they did it stood from the chair and slowly
pointed a steel finger forward.
Rex knew that what he would
say was grave even before he spoke. It was in the menacing glare he bestowed on
the both of them. "You permitted her to escape, Rex. This disappoints me
greatly."
Rex gulped. The sound of
the man’s voice always sent chills down his spine. He’d thought he’d gotten
used to it. He’d thought wrong. Bolivar Trask was a man who knew how to
intimidate. "It-it wasn't my fault, Boss. I shot her, but she was damn
tough, and we were not able to stop her! None of my men can fly, damnit!"
The cyborg clenched his
fist in a sudden burst of rage. "You idiot! What I don’t need it
excuses!" he roared. "I ran her photo through what was left of the
old hard drive and what do I find out? She belongs to the mutant group that
almost killed me that’s what. She’s one of the X-Men! It was they who left me
under the rubble of my first base to die after Mastermold's destruction! It was
the X-men that ruined what I created, who stepped in my way at every turn in my
attempt to help human kind take a firm hand to the evolved pestilence that
makes up mutant kind. And it is the X-men who made me what I am today! They are
my sworn enemies and you just let one of them get away!!!"
Rex's spine began to turn
into jello as the cyborg's voice became more and more loud and anger-filled
with every word and accusation. "B-but..." he babbled, trying to
overcome his fear.
"You have one week. In
that time I want the mutant X-man found and brought to me. If she resist, I
want her body brought to me. In either case, you will bring what remains of her
to me! When I have her, there will be no need to have the film, as she could
not possibly have had time to get it into anyone’s hands. And if she has, she
will tell me... eventually.
"Gather your men and
take whatever you feel necessary to get the job accomplished. But make sure
that you do not fail me a second time, Rex." The man machine slowly
regained his seat. "I am a man who has been through too much to be anymore
patient. Or forgiving."
"Ehm...Boss, but ain't
the Sentinel that flew off before supposed to take care of her?" Anthony
piped in for the first time.
The half-machine man's
expression darkened even more. When he turned his dull black eye on Anthony,
the young man shivered visibly and took a step back. "The sentinel that
you speak of was destroyed several hours ago."
The two men looked at each
other with a puzzled look for quite a time, then turned their heads back to the
screen. "How did it happen?" Rex asked. Surely the mutant didn’t
destroy it. No mutant was that tough.
The machine crossed his
metal fingers through his flesh ones sitting back in the chair. "Frankly,
I don't have the slightest idea. One moment it was in pursuit the next it was
utterly destroyed."
"But then, what if the
thing which has destroyed the Sentinel shows up when we're there? How are we
supposed to handle such a matter?" Anthony asked holding his breath. The
way he’d heard it the new Sentinel were nearly invincible. Whatever took it out
had to be strong.
"That is your concern,
not mine! If it is a human that protects her, let the mutant and the
gene-traitor feel the wrath of Bolivar Trask! Do not disappoint me. If there is
a problem be sure to inform Mr. Rand. I assure you, the message will get to
me."
* * *
Sid couldn’t remember a
time when he was more stressed out than the week that followed. He thought he’d
prepared himself for anything; mind and body. He’d been wrong. Taking care of
the mystery woman that landed in his lake was overworking his mind and hot
wiring his body.
He first realized that caring
for her would be more than routine when he went to check on her later the first
evening. After laying her down and leaving her alone to sleep off the sedative
he’d injected. His luck took a turn for the worst when he headed to the front
door to discover that the bright sunny morning he’d been about to spend
wandering through the woods was now overshadowed with clouds; fast moving, fat,
dark gray rain clouds. In fact, the sky was covered with a mass of the things
all of them looking more than ready to drop a ton of rain, lightning, and
thunder enough to make the wild life take shelter.
Closing the front door on
one particularly loud roar of thunder, Sid headed for the kitchen. The thunder
that followed his progress made the walls shake and the glasses in his cupboard
rattle. When next he looked out the kitchen window it was pouring outside, so
that he could barely see further than several feet.
Rubbing his chin and
frowning, Sid leaned on the counter and studied the world outside his window.
He’d been living there for seven years and it had never rained like it was
raining now. It was as if the sky had just been given permission to run riot.
Deciding that he would
spend the rest of the day inside, which was probably for
the best, as he wanted to
keep an eye on his house guest, Sid settled in. Pulling out an old piece of
wood and a knife, he spent a couple of hours carving some weird shape or
another. He wasn’t very good at it. Damn but he hated being stuck indoors.
But hell, why did he have
to stay indoors, he sure as hell wasn’t afraid of a little rain?
The storm shaking the walls
and the rain playing an erratic rhythm on the roof hadn’t calmed or abated at
all since beginning. Sid was just rising to his feet when he heard a moan from
upstairs. Surprised, as he’d expected the woman to be asleep for several hours
more, Sid immediately went to check on her. By the time he did so, the moans
coming from the room were louder and was it his imagination or did the walls
shake with thunder every time the woman moaned?
When he got to his bedroom
door, he saw that the woman was not only awake but she’d kicked the covers off
her and was tossing, thrashing really, in bed. Sid panicked when he saw that
her movements were stretching his bandages to the limit. Already there were
patches of blood where some of her wounds had reopened. The moans and gasps she
elicited were miserable. Sid suspected that she was suffering terribly. But he
wasn’t a doctor, she could be dying for all he knew. Though he really hoped she
wasn’t.
Stepping into the small
room and falling to his knee beside the bed, Sid hesitantly reached a hand down
to touch her head. He’d noticed that her skin was covered in a thin film of
sweat, this was probably a good thing as it indicated that her fever had broken.
But his hope was dashed when he felt how cold her skin was.
"Hell, this can’t be
good," he said to himself. He’d heard of a person’s temperature rising,
sure, but falling?
When he made to pull back
his hand, the woman reached up and grabbed his wrist with her free one. Sid was
surprised by both the action and the strength in the woman’s grasp. Looking
down at her face, he saw that her eyes were opened and she was staring straight
at him.
Her eyes were blue. Sid
thought they were the color of the heavens. They shone like the shiniest of
sapphires. He found himself drowning in them. That was before the woman gasped
and a branch broke though one of his bedroom windows knocking over one of his
framed posters and scattering some of his belongings all over the floor. The
cold damp air that accompanied the branch though the window made Sid shiver.
Rising to his feet, disengaging himself from the woman as gently as possible,
Sid ran to the window, fighting the wind and the rain as he did so.
Outside the thunder punished
the earth with a vengeance. Trees bowed to the unyielding force of a frantic
wind. The lake water, unused to the downpour threatened to overflow it’s banks.
The sky was alight with fire. The air was thick with moisture. The bag Sid had
tied to the tree banged against the wood with a heavy thump, the rope holding
it up willing to snap.
Sid tripped once before he
could get to the window where water was dampening his floor and the sound of
thunder was polluting the air, so that he couldn’t think or hear himself yell.
Behind him, the woman began to moan again and this time Sid didn’t miss the
rapport her misery shared with the elements just beyond his four walls. When
she moaned, the sky became alight, when she gasped the wind howled like a
crazed animal, and as she thrashed and twisted in misery thunder shook the damp
earth.
When Sid finally made it to
the window, he picked the fallen poster up off the floor and set it in front of
the window, while he did this he moved his thin dresser behind it creating a
wind break and a thin barrier against the rain. Turning he rushed to the
adjourning bathroom and dampened a wash cloth. Returning to the room, which was
now a royal mess, but more specifically to the woman in the bed, Sid leaned
over her and began to wipe the sweat from her brow. Her eyes were closed again.
This Sid noticed immediately.
The woman slowed her
thrashing as he wiped her brow. Trying something he’d read about, Sid started
to hum an old tune he’d once heard. He didn’t know if the woman could hear him
over the thunder, but soon her thrashing ceased all together. Outside, as Sid
suspected it would, the thunder fell away drastically, as did the erratic
pounding of the rain upon his roof. Instead of hurricane Andrew, the weather
was now calm. This Sid saw through the other window in his room. But even
though the weather had settled Sid still hummed.
Somehow the woman in his
bed was entwined with the elements. As long as she was disturbed the weather
would run riot. If he managed to keep her calm, than the weather outside would
be calm as well.
"So is that your
mutant ability, Miss?" He asked of her, though he knew she couldn’t hear
him. She was moaning again, but her moans weren’t as filled with misery. When
he bathed her forehead with the towel, she reached up and grasped his wrist
again, but this time with very little strength.
Sid not wanting to disturb
her, didn’t pull his wrist away.
Unfortunately, the woman
was going to need to be recovered with the blankets and therein lay the
problem. Hell, he should have covered her earlier.
Sid reached for the
blankets balled at the bottom of the bed the same time the woman shifted
position. Turning on her side, laying in nothing but those damn bikini briefs,
Sid could hardly pull his eyes away. Seven years of celibacy hadn’t been a good
idea. Sure at the time it was fine, but now hell there was no way. He was only
human after all! Sid felt his body temperature rise the same time he felt
another region rise. Before he’d thought the woman’s moans abject misery, now
they sounded almost seductive.
It was his turn to break
out in a sweat. How the hell was he going to take care of
this woman, if he lost
control every time he looked at her?
Calling himself all kinds
of an ass, Sid gritted his teeth and reached for the first blanket. Disengaging
the woman’s hand from his wrist and tucking it by her side, Sid covered the
temptation that she was becoming. When the comforter was secured around her,
Sid reached for the quilt. When that was tucked in, he stepped back away from
her as if she were the devil himself. Boy if his Sensei ever heard about this,
Sid was sure he’d die of shame right in front of the man. Here he was Sidney
Meyers, the so-called toughest man ever born cowering at the sight of a naked
woman in his bed. Well, half-naked, though he didn’t think those briefs counted
for much, they should be illegal! She was hurt, nearly mortally, hell she may
not last the week. She was unconscious, running a high fever, the shift from
hot to chill would likely topple his home. But damn she was beautiful.
She was also in danger. Sid
decided then and there that he’d make sure she came out of her current
predicament. He also promised to take care of the guy who’d shot her and kicked
her.
Little did he know that her
condition would threaten to topple his home literally. The storms she conjured
up after that day were impressive to say the least. Sid stayed close to the
house. He could always tell how she was doing by the intensity of the weather
outside. If he’d been a lesser man, he’d have lost his mind.
He hardly slept if ever at
all. The thunder woke him early in the morning. He was out early chopping wood
in order to keep the house warm as a cold front made its way to the area. The
lake behind his home had to be lined with bags of sand to prevent it from
rising and flooding. Instead of cooking for one, and Sid didn’t eat often, he
had to struggle through three meals a day, mostly canned soup, to feed the
woman causing the metrologic phenomenon’s. And she wasn’t calm unless he was in
the room with her. Sid finally decided that the best thing for him to do was to
move back into his room. Setting up a pallet on the floor, he was able to grab
small amounts of sleep in between caring for the woman. She was very demanding,
she was also dangerous in her condition as he found out several days after her
arrival when he woke her to take some medicine he’d whipped together. One
minute he was standing next to the bed the next he’d felt a jolt and found
himself slammed against a wall, her medicine covering one of his favorite
Hootie and the Blowfish T-shirts.
Luckily he’d been a
stronger man, he didn’t lose his sanity, though he’d come close.
But then he’d hardly been
worried about loosing his mind. It was his desire for her that had him staying
awake at night, listening to her shallow breathing. It was his desire for her
that had his hands shaking when he sponged her skin or bathed her brow. And he
found out that it wasn’t only the electricity that he should have been weary of
one evening, when she’d opened her eyes; her dazed and dilated beautiful blue
eyes, and reached out to him pulling his face down to hers for a kiss hot
enough to fog the windows in the room. When Sid did finally pull away, the
woman had fallen back into the realm of the unconscious and he’d been left
sweating and suffering a pain that only a man could suffer. It was nights like
those that wore out his body.
When Sid laid down to sleep
a week after finding the woman, he couldn’t help but think, his life was in for
some changes in a very big way.
authored by David altered
by Valegra