. I .
(Monday, 10:05 a.m.)
“Did I hear someone dial D for dream-therapist?”
Fontanelle was standing in the doorway of the mansion, completely encased in tight black leather and with her hair freshly bleached. It was the kind of look that would have looked offensive, even obscene to anyone who was not acquainted with the singular middle-aged mutant therapist. Charles Xavier, however, was used to her outlandish fashion sense as much as he was her erratic and rather eccentric mannerisms. He welcomed her into the mansion with his usual warm smile.
“Ah, Fontanelle. Please, do come in. I must admit, I wasn’t expecting you so soon…”
She stepped inside the hallway with the air of one who already owned the place.
“You said the girl’s condition was critical,” she replied. “So I came down as soon as I can. Can’t fault a dream-therapist for wanting to do her job, can you?”
“Indeed,” he half-smiled. “But when I said ‘critical’ I’m afraid I didn’t explain exactly what I meant…”
“Then you meant critical as in…?”
“As in Rogue herself demanded very…strongly, shall we say – that she have her dreams scraped.”
“I’m getting very strange vibes, Charlie.”
“Strange, indeed…” Xavier frowned momentarily. “She’s been having visions within her dreams. She’s quite unable to control them. I thought my psychic therapy could successfully treat her, but apparently it has not.”
“That’s because the astral plain and the dreamscape are vastly different things, Professor,” Fontanelle sniffed haughtily. “Let me have a look at the girl and I’m sure I’ll be able to solve the problem for you.”
(10:30 a.m.)
The first sense she got was of air. Air, thick and cloying, tasteless. She couldn’t see a thing. She spread out her hands into the darkness, only to touch soft, impenetrable walls of no substance.
All right, she thought grimly. If
this is how the girl wants to play this…
She pushed a little harder. And fell right through…something.
She fell for a while, finally landing unceremoniously into some mal-formed landscape. A wasteland was what she would have described it, except it wasn’t detailed enough to be a wasteland. The horizon seemed so dull and hazy. Like someone had splashed a bucketful of water over an oil painting before it had dried. Nothing was there. No trees, no plants, no rocks, no animals, no light.
I must be in the wrong landscape,
Fontanelle thought, taking a step forward.
The girl’s meant to have dozens of
psyches hanging around in this skull of hers.
Either that or…
…She’s blocking me out.
Fontanelle stopped. Suddenly the landscape had changed mid-sentence, just as though she had stepped through an unseen portal from one world and into another. Now she was in an strange building, damp, dark, dripping. A dusty skylight hung like an aging star far above in an inky firmament. A hazy pillar of moonlight shone ominously onto a spot in the middle of the room. The rest of the room was dark as pitch. She could have been standing anywhere in it – all Fontanelle knew was where she was in relation to that thin shaft of light.
“One, two, three…”
Someone was counting, somewhere in the room. The voice was thin, reedy, but enough to echo through the cold, quiet, darkened space.
“…Four, five, six…”
The voice stopped. Whoever it was suddenly began to weep with the soft insistence of a child.
Okay, Fontanelle thought. This is just a little too freaky.
“Hello? Is anyone there?” she called out.
The sobbing stopped. Fontanelle stood stock still, holding her breath, her heart pounding. She had walked into many dreams in her lifetime; the first dream she had walked into was her best friend’s nightmare, at the tender age of thirteen. The terror of that experience had stayed with her for the rest of her life – yet over the years she had learnt to harden herself to all conceivable traumas the dreaming mind might have thrown at her. This though, she thought, was something she had never dealt with before. Usually, once she entered a dream, it was hers. She knew exactly where to go to get the information she wanted. She knew exactly what every little detail meant. But in this dream she was disoriented, dislocated and – dare she admit it – afraid. She took a tentative step forward.
“Who is that?!” she cried, her voice unintentionally wavering.
Silence pervaded, like dirty old water seeping over mildewed bricks. Each drop trickled like slime down Fontanelle’s spine.
“Rogue, is that you?” she called out.
Footsteps on tattered rug answered in response. Thud, thud, thud, thud. Fontanelle froze, her ears pricking involuntarily at the sound. The steps started from some remote corner of the room to cross the floor at a measured, almost sedate pace. Closer, closer. A shadow lengthened over the pillar of moonlight. Thud, thud, thud. The shadow shrivelled as if withered by the light. A ghost now stood in its silvery glow. The eyes and hair were bleached of all colour. The skin was like unpolished metal. The mouth was as cold and still as a frostbitten lake.
The ghost wore the face of Rogue.
“Ah can't…seeeee… you,” she crooned. Her singsong voice was a tear-stained whisper.
Breathing deeply, Fontanelle too stepped forwards and into the moonlight.
“Was it you who was counting?” she managed to ask.
“Yes,” Rogue answered on a breath.
“Why?”
Pause.
“Ah’m not sure.” She opened out the palms of her hands and looked at them with child-like curiosity. “One, two, three, four, five, six…” She looked up at the older woman again with ashen eyes. “Ah think ah’m goin’ to have to make a choice.”
“What choice? What do you mean?”
“Ah don’t know,” she sang. “But it frightens me.”
Silence again, this time like a mantra. Rogue looked at Fontanelle as though she expected to be asked another question.
“Where are we?” the dream-therapist asked, looking about. She could still see nothing but for that small square of skylight.
“Ah’m not sure,” Rogue replied as before. “Maybe it belongs t’ Red Eyes. Ah think it’s his house.”
“What, this old dump?” Fontanelle tried to sound lighthearted, but her voice only trembled all the more. She had no idea what the girl meant by ‘red eyes’. Better not to ask. The professor had given her a mission and she had to get it over and done with. The more she stayed in this dream the more it scared her. Slowly she swivelled her eyes back onto the ghost in front of her. “I thought I was going to see the lights,” she began conversationally. “The Professor told me that I might be able to see some lights, Rogue.”
“Wrong dream,” Rogue shook her head slowly. “This is another dream.”
“Another dream? Does it tell you things about the Diaries? Like the dream with the lights does?”
“Yes. But ah don’t know how to read it. Ah can’t control either of them. Ah don’t know how to control them at all…” She faltered off, but Fontanelle pressed onwards.
“What happens in this dream?”
Rogue did not answer. She looked suddenly distracted, as though she had heard a voice or a noise in the dark that troubled her. When next she raised her eyes to Fontanelle’s, her cheeks were wet with silent tears.
“He…shouldn’t…be… here…” she choked. “Don’t…let him…come here…”
“What? Who do you mean, Rogue? And where is here?”
Here, there, everywhere, suddenly soft tentacles snaked out from the night and softly brushed against Fontanelle’s bare arms and cheeks. An involuntary scream stifled itself in her throat. The very fabric of the dream was alive. It was alive. And now Fontanelle suddenly knew why Rogue couldn’t control what she saw.
Rogue stepped forwards, the darkness swallowing up her white limbs like quicksand.
“Come on,” she whispered. “Ah’ll show you.”
*
(1:28 p.m.)
Three hours later and Fontanelle returned from the infirmary, her face haggard.
“Any luck?” Xavier asked quietly, so as not to jar Rogue from her sleep.
“I had no idea the girl’s mind was so fragmented,” she replied in a low voice. “I’m afraid there wasn’t much information I could glean from her. She is highly resistant to my probings.”
“I see,” Xavier said, stroking his chin thoughtfully. “It shouldn’t surprise me really. None of our telepaths are able to sufficiently read her – not even I am able to. Dreamscraping, of course, should be no less difficult.”
“I’m sorry, Professor,” Fontanelle replied quietly. “If her mind was less cluttered, maybe I would’ve been able to penetrate her subconscious more effectively. I wish I could have been of more help to you.”
Sage was standing behind the Professor’s wheelchair, her face composed almost to the point of impassivity. But her eyes were hard as steel as they glared at Fontanelle, cold and indomitable. The older woman carefully drew her gaze away.
“However,” she added, once again addressing Xavier. “Due to the singular nature of Rogue’s dreams, I’d be inclined to agree with your theory that they do hold some deeper significance. From the structure of her dreamscape, I’d surmise that Rogue’s dreams are not dreams at all. They seem to be single, fixed events given expression in a dream form. In short they’re something I’ve never seen before. And that, I’m afraid, makes it very hard for me to penetrate them.”
“Visions of the future?” Xavier asked.
“Hmm.” Fontanelle looked thoughtful. “There is a class of dream where the subject effectively dreams of a future occurrence – usually a rather ordinary event in my experience. However, these dreams have a certain ‘feel’ of their own, and Rogue’s dreams simply ‘feel’ different to anything I’ve known before. It’s entirely possible that Destiny’s precognitive powers are expressing themselves as dreams in Rogue’s mind, rather than as any waking, lucid form of foresight.”
“Just as I thought,” Xavier mused. “What Rogue dreams of is catalogued in Irene Adler’s diaries. But so far they have proved to be as elusive and fragmented as the diaries themselves. And with most of the volumes currently missing, how are we able to decipher the symbols Rogue is able to give us?”
“Professor,” Fontanelle spoke up severely. “One thing I know for certain – Rogue is losing control over the dreams. It is a power that she is unable to discipline, and the current state of her mind is making it even harder. If you don’t do something soon these dreams will consume her.”
As will, I suspect, Destiny’s personality, Xavier thought grimly. And that’s something we cannot afford to have happen.
“Unfortunately,” he spoke out loud. “There seems to be little that we can do to stem the tide of these dreams. The telepathic therapy I’ve used on her just hasn’t work. The psyches in her mind make even penetrating her subconscious extremely difficult. If we can control the state of her mind then we may be able to stave off Destiny’s influence. But I don’t see any conceivable way of doing so.”
“Excuse me, Professor,” Sage spoke up from a little way behind him. “But there is a way.”
Initially the two had started at Sage’s impromptu speech. It wasn’t just that the younger woman liked to take a back seat. She also had a penchant for being totally ghost-like until the need arose for her to speak out. Xavier looked up at her in surprise. She returned the gaze with steely blue eyes.
“Please, enlighten me, Tessa,” he prompted the dark-haired woman.
“It is simple really. We reverse what began the whole problem in the first place.”
“You mean the disabling of Rogue’s powers?” Xavier asked.
“Exactly. I should be able to stabilize her genome once more by jumpstarting her dormant powers. Her own genetic idiosyncrasies will be restored and the rogue personalities will be curbed – for a time. She will still need to be monitored; I would advise giving her therapy in controlling her mutant powers so that she has total dominance over both Irene’s precognition and personality. But at least a first step will have been taken. I would be happy to supervise such therapy.”
“Your idea has merits, Tessa,” Xavier conceded slowly. “But it does mean that Rogue will have to pay a price. And I’m not sure it’s a price she’s willing to pay at the moment.”
A wry smile played on Sage’s lips.
“I would have mentioned the idea sooner, if I hadn’t been so concerned about Rogue’s possible reaction,” she admitted. “But the fact of the matter is that Rogue is one of the Seven. And I believe that if she gains control over her precog powers, she will be able to unravel the mystery of the Seven to us completely.”
Fontanelle, turned away, her face suddenly troubled. What was it Rogue had said?
I think I’m going to have to make a choice.
*