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Chapter 71: Let William Stryker… Perhaps, Live?
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Adam had to wonder. In the most stressful stretch of his existence; Stalked by a hell-lord, smeared by a global media machine, and now responsible for the emotional well-being of a cosmic force of nature; why did he find himself smiling more often than not?
The pressure from Mephisto's invisible chess game was immense, a constant, low-grade psychic hum of anxiety.
Yet, his dominant reaction wasn't terror; it was a sort of giddy, incredulous amusement. It was stressful, yes, but it was also funny.
Was the Joker onto something? Madness is like gravity: all it takes is a little push.
Adam had received not a push, but a lifetime of shoves into the abyss.
Two lifetimes, in fact; one of sterile suffering, one of brutal, scientific torture.
If one bad day could break a sane man, what did decades of curated misery produce?
He felt… fine. Relaxed, even. He should be a raving lunatic, a broken thing gibbering in a corner. Maybe he was.
Perhaps sanity wasn't a binary state, but a spectrum, and he'd quietly teleported to a different wavelength altogether.
The truest sign of insanity, he reasoned, wasn't words, but actions. And by that metric, he was certifiable.
He was a walking catastrophe of ambition and contradictory impulses. And he was about to take another leap into the profoundly unwise.
[Adam's having a sanity check… and giving himself a passing grade?]
["He felt… fine." Yeah, no.]
[His metric is right. His actions are pure, distilled madness. And he knows it.]
[All it takes is one bad day to reduce the sanest man alive to lunacy... Adam, I have unfortunate news for you...]
That's why he now stood in the heart of the Xavier Institute's sub-basement, beside Charles Xavier in the haunting, spherical chamber of Cerebro.
The machine was a technological marvel, a psychic amplifier of staggering power, designed to locate mutant brainwaves across the globe.
Charles felt a debt needed repaying, and Adam had a list. But first, there were words that needed airing.
"I must thank you, Adam," Charles began, his voice soft but firm in the vast space. "For your intervention. You saved lives. But I must ask… why must you always take things to such extremes?"
His wise eyes searched Adam's face. "You act with a certainty that disregards consequence. I have always felt you know more than you reveal."
"You must have some understanding of the nature of Jean's power. So why be so reckless? What if she had lost control? The damage… to herself, to others…"
Adam smiled, a serene expression that never failed to unnerve the Professor. "I do know more than I let on, Charles. My imaginary friends are quite the gossips."
He tapped his temple. "I understand, Jean. That's precisely why I'm guiding her down this path. It is the right path. The only one that leads to the light."
[Adam is my friend! He said it!]
[I have a friend, hehe...]
[Dude, touch some grass, friends are everywhere, trust.]
[Charles is trying to have a serious talk with a man who credits his intel to ghosts.]
[Well, we aren't ghosts, but the Professor doesn't know that.]
["The only path to the light." Adam's version of 'light' is probably a supernova.]
Charles shook his head, his frustration evident. "To abandon all restraint is not a path, Adam. It is a fall."
"She's not abandoning restraint," Adam corrected, his tone patient, as if explaining basic arithmetic. "Her restraint is me. And I have no desire to cage her. A caged phoenix is a tragedy."
"I want her to shine. Luckily, her core is kindness. I believe in her nature. Therefore, this is the right path."
He turned his heterochromatic gaze fully on Charles, his head tilting. "You puzzle me, Professor. I've noticed you seem to place more restrictions on your allies than you do on your enemies. Why is that?"
Charles frowned. The source of Adam's unshakable confidence was a perennial mystery.
Were the "imaginary friends" a psychotic break, or a facet of his enigmatic Envy power?
He chose to address the question, not the mystery.
"You are still young, Adam. Power… the kind we wield… it is seductive. We must guard against losing our humanity, against believing ourselves gods. And the world is deeper, more fragile, than you may think."
"Such a mentality leads only to the downfall of our kind. Understanding. Compromise. That is our only sustainable path."
Adam chuckled, a dry, rustling sound. "But Professor, for understanding to occur, both parties must seek it."
"The ones you wish to 'understand' either refuse to try, or worse, they understand us perfectly, and that understanding fuels their desire for our extinction."
He leaned forward slightly. "Distinguish between potential friends and eternal foes. Why debate a man like William Stryker when you could have simply understood him?"
"You have the power to see the truth of a soul. You should have looked and seen the rot. Leaving such evil alive is an act of violence against your own people."
"It is exactly because the world is so deep and dangerous that you must reevaluate your calculus. Do more. Speak less."
[Xavier's core philosophy is flawed, but he's right. Marvel is too dangerous.]
["Leaving such evil alive is an act of violence against your own people." DAMN.]
[Charles should reevaluate and start reading more minds.]
[Why restrict himself from reading the minds of his enemies? He can just restrain himself by not looking into his people's minds.]
[Maybe it's about restraint? Some people, if they break their values again and again, will lose themselves in their powers. Maybe he's afraid of what he could become if he doesn't restrain himself.]
[Mmmm, well said.] [Makes sense.]
The words struck a nerve. Charles's face grew still, a mask of deep contemplation.
The memory of the pain-transference tanks, of Scott and Ororo's agony, was still on his mind.
Finally, he sighed, the weight of the world in the sound. "And your answer, in the end, is always to kill. Do you believe there are no consequences?"
"The people you and Jean… dealt with yesterday. The military, the government… they will not care for our reasons. We will be named murderers."
Adam burst out laughing. It wasn't a cruel laugh, but one of genuine, bewildered delight.
"They won't care for our reasons," He repeated, as if savoring the punchline of a sublime joke. He murmured to himself.
"They do not seek understanding. They make no concessions. They will defend a monster like Stryker because he served a purpose. How… hilarious."
His laughter died. He turned his full face to Charles, and all expression drained away.
His features became a placid, eerie mask. His cybernetic eye whirred faintly as it focused. The stare was calm, empty, and utterly chilling.
"What would you have me do, Charles?" Adam's voice was a soft, deadly monotone. "Let William Stryker… perhaps, live?"
He watched the conflict play out on the Professor's face; the idealism, the horror, the desperate search for a third option that didn't exist. Adam slowly shook his head.
"Never mind," He said, the warmth rushing back into his voice and posture as if a switch had been flipped.
He clapped his hands together. "I don't have much time. No gloom and doom for today." He chuckled, the previous moment vanishing like smoke.
But Charles was left reeling. Adam's calm, probing question, that vacant stare… it hadn't felt like a threat.
It had felt like a diagnosis. As if his answer would have determined not his physical fate, but his categorization in Adam's internal ledger: useful idealist or dangerous impediment.
The madness in Adam wasn't explosive; it was procedural, and that was far more frightening.
[That stare… that was the real Adam. The one behind the smiles and laughs.]
[Charles felt it. He was being evaluated.]
[No way Adam would kill the Professor if he didn't like the answer, right?]
[No... No, no... I don't think so?] [Hmm...] [Maybe?]
Charles guided his wheelchair to the central console. "Who is it you need to find?"
"Is it possible to locate a non-mutant?" Adam asked, ignoring the direct question. "A sorcerer with decent mental defenses. And… a vampire."
Charles's frown deepened, but he was beyond surprise at Adam's requests. "It is… improbable. Their brainwaves are not keyed to the X-Gene. A name might focus the search."
Adam's smile returned, strange and amused, "Vlad Dracula."
The name hung in the humming air. Charles knew vampires existed in the shadowed corners of the world. But the myth? The primal archetype? "That is… a legend... Unless?"
"Most legends have a bleeding heart of truth," Adam confirmed.
With a resigned nod, Charles placed the Cerebro helmet on his head. The chamber came alive.
Galactic vistas of psychic energy swirled around them, points of light representing mutant minds across the globe.
Charles pushed his telepathy through the amplifier, shifting its parameters, searching for the ancient, predatory psychic signature of the Lord of Vampires.
He searched. And searched. The machine was not built for this. After a long, straining silence, Charles removed the helmet, his face pale with effort.
"Nothing. I am sorry. If he exists, he is shielded, or his consciousness is too alien for Cerebro to parse."
"I see," Adam murmured, more to himself than to Charles. "Then I have no choice."
Before Charles could ask what he meant, Adam raised his hands. Visible arcs of blue-white energy; his Mechanical Force; crackled from his palms.
With a sound like tearing fabric, the energy surged outwards, harmless, a wave.
It washed over the intricate machinery of Cerebro, seeping into every circuit, every crystal, every quantum processor.
The effect wasn't apparent yet, but the toll on Adam was visible. He was sweating, frowning, his hands trembling slightly.
He had never tried to enhance something of this scale and complexity. It was like trying to lift a mountain with his mind.
"Try… now," Adam ground out, his voice strained.
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