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Chapter 21: Well, Fuck
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[Tf, Adam brainwashed you!!! He brainwashed me too!]
[Wait, I was also thinking fuck Hydra, as if everything bad that happens automatically becomes Hydra's fault, Wtf?]
[Adam! Get out of my head!]
A young woman with iridescent scales covering half her face shrank from Logan's touch, her eyes wide with a terror that spoke of repeated vivisection.
An older man, his limbs twisted at unnatural angles, whimpered as he was freed from a restraint chair stained with his own filth.
A boy, no older than ten, had a crude neural inhibitor bolted directly to his skull, wires snaking down his neck.
The air was thick with the smells of antiseptic, blood, and despair.
Adam wasn't surprised. He had lived this.
He knew the depths of human curiosity and cruelty.
Through his ongoing Cyberpathic link, he was reading the facility's logs, the cold, clinical reports detailing the "procedures."
Neural inhibitors to suppress power manifestation. Non-consensual genetic sampling.
Forced injections of experimental serums and sedatives. Invasive testing to map psionic and physiological pathways.
Brain surgeries to locate the "mutant gene." Long-term exposure to disorienting sensory deprivation and overload.
Brainwashing attempts using conditioning and pharmacological agents.
Coercive recruitment through pain, electroshock, and the systematic breaking of the spirit.
He understood it all through the lens of his philosophy. He understands human nature, and how easily they're influenced by their environment.
He was a believer in Genetic, Environmental, and Psychological Determinism.
Free will was an illusion.
Genes shaped the hardware. Environment wrote the software. Trauma and conditioning installed the malware.
"You" didn't choose to be cruel; your genetics gave you the capacity, your environment normalized it, and your psychology rationalized it.
Even the act of rebellion was a predetermined outcome of accumulated data points.
The Oracle in the Matrix was right: we don't make choices; we only try to understand why they were made.
Witnessing this fresh hell, he could feel the programming of his own soul shifting.
The concept of 'trust' was being systematically deleted, its code overwritten.
The words Absolute, Happiness, and Death glowed brighter in his internal architecture, his core objectives becoming ever more defined.
He was consciously experiencing the making of a decision and understanding that he made it solely based on things out of his control.
[I'm also a firm believer in the lack of free will.]
[Wouldn't the Marvel universe be different, considering how chaotic it is?]
[It's chaotic and random, so still no free will.]
[I'd say the only thing that can disapprove the argument is the soul, if there is something so special about the soul that allows us to truly make unique choices]
[I understand Magneto more. With how many extinctions mutants have faced, how can you accept coexistence when it's a false notion?]
[Professor X's way of taking back shots all day every day doesn't work, but Magneto's way also won't work, as Adam said.]
[What's Adam's way?]
[We will know soon, I guess?]
"They comin'?" Logan's gruff voice snapped him from his daze.
The old mutant's expression was heavy, his eyes holding a centuries-old weariness made fresh by this new atrocity.
Adam nodded, his face a placid mask. "The Blackbird's ETA is a few minutes."
They returned to work, freeing the broken and the scared.
Adam, despite his cold calculus, mustered a gentle smile for a crying child.
He sought happiness himself; he knew its value.
A smile, a kind word, a moment of safety, a hug; these were tiny, cost-effective variables that could shift another's deterministic path toward a slightly better outcome.
Why not provide them?
The facility was soon surrounded by the wailing sirens of M.R.D. reinforcements, but they were irrelevant.
The Blackbird would be here before any assault could begin.
But the universe was a system of chaotic variables, and a new, massive one had just been introduced.
The ground trembled!
Not the shudder of an explosion from within, but a deep, groaning vibration that shook the very foundations of the building.
The ceiling above the central block cracked with a sound like a glacier calving.
Great strips of steel and concrete were torn upwards, wrenched away as if by the hand of a god, revealing the star-dusted night sky.
There, floating serenely above them, was a figure.
He stood on a jagged metallic platform of the very roof he had just dismantled.
He was clad in crimson and purple, a regal helmet of the same colors shielding his head.
His cape billowed in a wind of his own making. His expression was one of cold, paternal authority.
"Well, fuck," Logan's voice was a low growl of pure exasperation.
Adam's mind, for a split second, went blank with sheer endless disbelief.
What the actual fuck? This was a statistical outlier of catastrophic proportions.
This wasn't in the plan.
Why? Hello? Why? You bitch fortune! I'm talking to you!!!!
Fear was a secondary concern, for he didn't feel any; his primary processing power was already dedicated to a single task: recalculating the entire scenario around this new, dominant variable.
How to turn this?
Magneto's voice boomed, amplified and resonant. "I am… proud." His gaze swept over the freed mutants, then the carnage.
"I had not expected Charles's students to finally understand the necessity of such… decisive action."
His eyes, sharp and intelligent, locked onto Adam. "But I correct myself. This is not their design. It is yours."
Adam's eyes narrowed behind his mask. The certainty in that statement was not guesswork.
The source could only be... Who? Theoretically, only he and Wolverine should know of their actions tonight.
But that's in theory, psychics like Charles can easily find out because while his Hollow curse can safeguard his mind, Wolverine does not have such means.
Even if he used Hollow on him, it won't do much.
The only reason Hollow is giving him great peace of mind is because his curses are more effective on him.
Then there is the fact that there are other means of discovering their actions, which one is it?
Magneto descended, his metallic platform lowering him until he hovered just above the shattered floor.
"You do not belong with them, child. Their path is one of delusion and slow death. You… you belong with me. With the Brotherhood. Join us."
Silence.
And the silence obviously displeased him. "Look behind you!" He commanded, his voice rising with passion.
"Behold the fruits of human 'tolerance'! Do you still believe in their fairy tale of coexistence? It is impossible! They will always fear us, hunt us, and cage us!"
"We are not villains. We are freedom fighters! We are Homo superior! We are merely claiming our rightful place in this world!"
Still silence.
He took Adam's silent, calculating frown as a refusal. A flicker of impatience crossed his face. "I do not care for your answer. You will see reason."
He made a subtle grasping motion with his hand.
Instantly, both Adam and Wolverine felt their bodies seized by an invisible, irresistible force.
Logan was wrenched into the air, his body contorting.
Every atom of the adamantium laced to his skeleton became a puppet string for the master of magnetism.
He gritted his teeth, a strangled curse dying in his throat. Like, Goddamn! Magneto was his worst match!
For Adam, the assault was different but no less absolute.
The metal components of his sleek suit; the reinforced chainmail vest beneath the fabric, the buckles, his backpack; all suddenly became his prison.
The suit constricted, the metal threads digging viciously into his flesh, holding him rigid and upright in a cage of his own making.
He could feel the cold bite of the metal against his skin, a pressure that promised broken bones and shredded muscle.
Magneto laughed, a sound devoid of true humor. "You are fearless, I see. Do you think I will not kill you? You are correct."
"But I can make you experience a pain that will make you beg for death's embrace. So, I ask you one last time. Why cling to a sinking ship? Join me."
To emphasize his point, he flexed his will. The metal in Adam's suit tightened further, and a white-hot agony erupted along his ribs.
Across from him, Wolverine let out a choked roar as the adamantium in his body was manipulated, threatening to tear him apart from the inside.
"Magneto… you bastard…" Logan managed to grit out. "We're… helping our kind… why… stop us…?"
Magneto's laugh echoed through the ruined chamber. "Stop you? My misguided friend, I am not here to stop you. I am here to recruit. Your… enthusiastic liberation has provided me with a fresh batch of soldiers for my army."
The color drained from Wolverine's face. The horror of the facility was now compounded by a new, profound hopelessness.
They hadn't freed these broken souls. They had simply delivered them from one master to another.
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[ 1000 Power Stones For An Extra Chapter!!! ]
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