Up, Up, And Away (Marrow)

[BWS2K]

Marrow awoke slowly, groggy and with senses dulled. She'd been stalking a member of the Friends of Humanity, one Joe-Bob Colt and was going to send a message, threaten him - threaten them - to leave the Morlocks alone. Break into his secluded cabin, flex a bit, and make her point.

Her very stabby point.

But here she was... tied up? Bound - is that steel cable? - and gagged and propped up in the corner of the cabin. Embers were still hot in the fireplace across the room, throwing an eerie diffuse glow about the space. A few feet to her left was Colt, similarly immobilized, though with considerably more anxiety and confusion showing on his face, if what she could see in the dim light was at all accurate.

In front of them, seated cross-legged on the floor, was a silent armored figure. The plating looked almost cybernetic, the domed helmet... familiar to Marrow, if only she could collect her thoughts. It placed a small projector on the floor and suddenly the room was awash with text and sound and color - a journal narrated by a voice all too recognizable to the X-Man...

HOLORECORDING 0201 BEGINS

--[[graphic//brooklynbridge]]--

"Good-bye to you, Web-Man."

Those were meant to be my last words.

Falling a hundred feet into the rushing waters below, I wanted my last moments to be a mix of freedom and weightlessness. There was no fear, no anxiety.
As the chill current accepted and enveloped my body, a single final thought before the end:

No more pain.

Unfortunately, as always, I survived.

--[[animation//entityportal]]--

As soon as I hit the water - felt the frigid anticipation of forever-peace - I found myself pulled towards a light, and not a white one at the end of a long tunnel. This one led elsewhere. A familiar place, referred to as the Hill dimension.

Not the vowel I'd choose.

I grew up there.

--[[animation//oldhill1]]--

It was a savage place meant to harden hearts and minds and bones and flesh. There was only one rule there - survival of the fittest - and it was a rule I learned well. Death was elusive (something about the atmosphere curing any wounds and preserving life). We watched as some of the elders eventually died of old age. Not exactly inspiring. Time was a fickle thing too, passing much faster there, relative to Earth. I was born in the tunnels below Manhattan and returned only a few years later in my early twenties.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

--[[animation//oldhill2]]--

The Hill was an apt name for this world, as there was really only one landmark of note. Dominating the craggy wastelands swept nearly clean of life from acid rains and the fields of metallic flora, perched atop a single central rising mesa that lay silhouetted against a blood-red skyscape, was Mikhail Rasputin's castle. Inside was peace, rest, warmth, shelter.

No more pain.

But Mikhail was a liar. I had been there once, when I was young. Until my mutations fully manifested. Then I was exiled with the rest, forever striving to return. It was a bloody single-minded existence:
climb, fight, tear, crawl, rend, feed, run, fall, bruise, bleed, heal, pull yourself up-up-up - always up.

--[[animation//oldhill3]]--

That was then. Now, something was different.

It was empty.

I stared out at the abandoned hovels and holes that dotted the rising ground, the discard clubs and makeshift blades. The decayed carcasses of what passed for wildlife, pitted from the corrosive weather. There was no sound. I was alone.

Well, almost.

--[[graphic//entity]]--

Hovering above me, pulsing with green light, was... something. Someone. It didn't speak with words but somehow I could still hear it's voice - a trick Xavier or the Grey Lady might know more about than I. It had once bonded with Mikhail, enhancing his powers over energy and matter, helping him shape this land - this whole dimension - as he desired. This creature had lost Mikhail and his children long ago, however, leaving the land empty and desolate in a perpetual entropic downward spiral of misery. It desired to re-make its world.

And it wanted me to help.

--[[graphic//newhill1]]--

We spent years together, healing the land and nurturing life. Guiding it. I hadn't died after all but this was surely a Heavenly afterlife. We teased and tugged and pushed and nudged along accelerated evolutionary paths until we had filled the world with beautiful creatures to inhabit this new Eden. Angelbirds and windriders replaced the spiny avians of yore in clear skies above, calcats and remy-dogs and wolverines (because there always has to be a Wolverine) now thrived in grasslands where once only scrawny poisonous reptiles had scratched out a living under rocks and in holes.

Our work together was complete.

--[[animation//newhill_aerial1]]--

Nearly a decade had passed for me there, and we had very nearly erased all traces of the world from before. No more Darwinian lifecycles, no more constant struggle and wondering about where the next meal was coming from - or if it was going to be you. It was a good place, a peaceful place. The kind of place I could live out my days in.

And then another portal opened.

--[[animation//ceremony1]]--

Someone was performing the Ceremony of Light in the Morlock tunnels again. I had discovered the connection between the ritual and this dimension long ago but never fully understood it. Yet now I watched and listened through the dimensional rift, the voices and movement slowed by the temporal disparity, and began to understand. For as long as I could remember, the sacred tradition had meant hope and salvation for Morlocks. Deliverance. At this moment, as I observed an imposter wearing my own face addressing my people in my birthplace, I knew why I hadn't died yet.

The Entity I had worked with for so long to create one better world now bid me farewell as I left to do it again on Earth.

I promised I'd be back.

HOLORECORDING 0201 ENDS

"That was a week ago," said the armored figure, its voice muffled and robotic through the helmet's mouthpiece. It switched off the small projector. "I spent my time gathering information about what had gone on in my absence. It wasn't too difficult."

It reached behind and withdrew a pair of simple manila folders. Opening the first, the stranger lay out its contents to be clearly seen: Newspaper clippings, print-outs, photographs, financial reports - in short, a history of Marrow's activity since the very first iteration of Gene Nation. Bombings, abductions, assassinations... complete with details that would make even the Weapon X program blush.

Reaching up to its helmet, a hiss of air was released and a cloud of vapor briefly obscured the identity of this intruder, this mysterious agent who'd ruined Marrow's plans for the evening utterly. When it cleared, somehow, the only surprised face was that Joe-Bob:

It was Marrow.

Or close. She was older by a fair bit. Mid-thirties at least.

"I heard your words at the ceremony, young one," she spoke in a carefully-measured rhythm, like some kind of feral beast only playing at sophistication. "...and I thank you for them. For the gift of hope they bring to my people."

She stood slowly, depressing a button on her forearm that let the cybernetic armor plating fall in pieces to the ground, revealing only a plain dark bodysuit that hugged every muscle and curve of her torso tightly.

She was... beautiful.

Perhaps not in the classic sense, but this beauty came from an inner strength and power that commanded attention and inspired awe. No bony protrusions marred this woman's body, no spines or spikes or ugly growths. Her legs - bare from the knee down - and biceps and forearms and hands were all spotless smooth fuchsia skin. Her perfect face framed in long straight scarlet locks that fell to just below her shoulders. It was like staring at some sort of exotic Amazonian goddess.

She locked eyes with her younger self, pointing down from her place that couldn't be more than six or seven feet away. That's when the growths finally appeared, like scales that poured down from her neck, covering every inch of her body in pale skeletal mail armor. They complimented and exaggerated her form until her hands were gauntleted talons, her shoulders were spiked pauldrons.

It was a breath-takingly terrible sight.

Still pointing her needle-like finger at Marrow, she continued: "...but I know about D'Gard."

That was the Morlock Marrow had been ordered to assassinate to complete her acceptance into Weapon X. Something she'd done reluctantly, since D'Gard had once saved her life, but the program had offered so much in return. It wasn't the only Morlock blood on her hands either, between those she'd sent to their deaths as part of later Gene Nation operations and the rest that Agent Zero had killed. Friends that had been comrades all her life.

Well. Not her friends, apparently.

"I know about how you killed him who once saved my life just for the chance to be.... pretty." She spat the last word out with more hate than seemed possible for one person to have. "A pretty little Morlock girl in the pretty shiny Upworld."

She leaned close now, only inches from the younger Marrow's face but talon still steady and at the ready: "For D'Gard, and for what you hoped to gain in murdering him - and for all the rest of my people, killed under your woefully inadequate leadership..."

The talon grew slowly, angled directly where it couldn't be blocked by hastily-erected bone armor.

"For all this, changeling, you must die."

It was over in less than a second. An uncomfortable ripping sound, a thin claw flashing through and then beyond a vulnerable eye socket, followed by sudden still silence. The body shuddered briefly, remaining eye staring blankly, and then slowly began deforming and returning to its original shape. The disguise had been superior in every way, and, barring the appearance of the original, it may have continued unnoticed forever. Skin turned from pink to green now, ridges forming along the chin and other places. It slumped within its wiry binds, now clearly revealing the telltale physiology of the Skrull.

Withdrawing her talon casually and now turning her attention at last to the middle-aged man cowering in abject fear, the woman - this superior and true Marrow - opened the second folder she'd brought. Flipping through it so that the man could fully comprehend what he was seeing, she spoke calmly: "This is your family, Joseph. This is your house, where you and your family live. Where you sleep."

The pictures were of him, his wife, his children - all engaged in various activity at all hours. To get these, to be this close...

"I want to make sure we understand each other, Joseph. I want you to think hard about these photos," she reached behind to the other folder, the one with the body counts and acts of terrorism, "...and these photos. Remember them when you start your car or open your front door or leave for work or lay down on your bed for a good night's sleep."

She held up one final picture from the folder. It was a composite of tunnels and their entrances, and of the Alley - home of the Morlocks below Manhattan.

"Because this is my family, Joseph. If you want to stir up trouble with mutants - if you want to posture and spew hateful rhetoric and do nasty things - make sure you pick on Xavier's ilk. They train, they fight, they're used to genetrash like you. I might even see you on the battlefield someday. But down here," she pointed to the tunnel picture, "...this is off-limits for you and your people. If I see or hear or even smell any of you near my family, in my home..."

Her voice trailed off and she shrugged.

"What so many of you Upworlders don't understand," she said, calmly beginning to collect all the pictures and return them to their respective folders, "What Xavier doesn't understand, what even the changeling didn't comprehend, is that my name is Marrow. Not Bone or Sheath or Knives or Crazy Mean Pink Stabby Girl. Marrow. Do you know the term? Its role and function in the human body?"

She paused but the only response the man could muster was a continued look of complete fear and helplessness.

"It's the place in your body that makes red and white blood cells, which I'm sure you understand are very important. Platelets too - the ones that clog wounds and stop bleeding. Biology can be complicated, I understand, so let's just keep it simple..."

The woman called Marrow, who had known pain and suffering for so long and had left her own personal Paradise in order to come back to it, stood towering over her remaining captor menacingly and broke off a bony dagger from her hip. With one fluid motion, she threw the folders into the air and hurled the blade at them, pinning them to the wall above the fireplace.

"Remember this, Joseph Robert Colt: Marrow produces blood."

Turning, she hefted the Skrull corpse on her shoulders surprisingly easily and left the cabin just as dawn began to break over the skyline.

The next day, as scheduled, Joe-Bob's drinking buddies would arrive. They'd go over the story, share some drinks, and laugh it off. Push the emotion way down like real men always do, and who cared if JB was a little reluctant to turn the key in the ignition of his jeep?

And later, at the mansion that served as both schoolhouse and home for the X-Men and their students, an alien body would be found pinned rather gruesomely to the gates. With it, scrawled in the creature’s blood, would be the words:

"THIS WAY TO A DARK RIDE"

-fin