Devourer of Sins

DEVOURER OF SINS CHAPTER TWENTY NINE (NC-17)
Disclaimers Apply


A/N Goddess Foxfeather, Queen of Mad Plotbunnies, Joris and Dodo got into some paint, I think...unless the dolphin's always been green and I haven't noticed...maybe he's molding... InterNutter, TC and Maxwell Pink rock. :p Readers/Reviewers: I'm being invaded! The platypi have run amuck, dodging the Killer Kitties (tm) and storming the duck-guard...I didn't know platypi were tviolviolent. And who's the fool who sold them guns?

"Do you ever get the feeling someone's gonna pop out of a closet someday and tell us we're on Candid Camera?" Logan asked under his breath as he banked the Blackbird, sending their bound intruder sliding towards starboard.
Storm raised a brow. "No, but I often wonder about my karma..." She turned to check on Itzli, as he called himself, before saying to Logan "I am seriously considering telling Kurt and Kitty they should see other people. None of these strange things occurred before they started their relationship."
Logan snorted. "Ro, you're a woman after my own heart." Evening out the jet, he called back to the slight man, "Now tell me again about this...whatever this is..."
Itzli inched forward on his bottom, legs bound in front of him after a failed attempt to bolt from Logan and Storm. Panting slightly from the effort, he said, "It's the Deus Project. It's gone wrong and the remaining prototypes are...loose."
Storm sighed. "Deus meaning god, correct?" She did not quite believe the story but in light of everything that had been happening, she had little choice in the matter.
"For the last time, yes!" he cried, cowering at Logan's growled invective. They were making good time, thanks to some subtle manipulation of the winds by Storm and Logan's expert flying, but they were still several hours from Bayville and the irritation was writ plainly on the faces of the two X Men. "The project was scraped earlier this year but there were a few of the researchers who thought they could make it work, thought they could work out the bugs in the system. They were wrong..."
"And how do you fit into this again?" Storm said, moving from her seat to help right the listing man. She felt a twinge of pity for him-he was a nervous wreck and it showed.
"I was...am...an early prototype. They thought they could take regular people, ordinary ones, and make them killing machines." He offered a weak laugh and managed a restricted shrug. "Would you ever suspect me of being a killer?"
Logan snorted again. "Bub, I know a thing or two about military experiments, and this whole thing sounds pretty damned improbable even by secret ops standards..."
Itzli straightened. "Logan, also known as Wolverine. Adamantium reinforced skeleton, retractable claws of the same substance. Accelerated healing powers ands near superhuman senses. Product of a military experiment yourself, yes? At least, partially..." He smiled then, a slick, oily expression that made Storm itch to slap him. "Ororo Munro. Able to manipulate the weather, once worshiped as a goddess...quite powerful. And also quite improbable..."
The fact that he was flying the jet was the one thing that kept Logan from leaping back and shaking Itzli until the smaller man's teeth rattled from his skull. "How the fuck do you know that?"
"I know many things about you and y. W. We learned about mutants like children learn the alphabet, drilled on the known mutations, on what causes them and how they can be created through scientific means. We also, one fine day, learned of you, Logan. You and Storm and Magneto and Professor Xavier...Indeed, all the known mutants, those that the government-not the façade you call a government, but the real one, the shadow of the artifice1--covets and knows, those that are listed in a database like so many pieces of office equipment. You didn't know that, did you? I'm willing to bet not even Magneto knows the extent of the government's knowledge of mutantkind."
Striving for control and gripping onto it by her metaphorical fingernails, Storm ground out, "You're saying you're not mutants? What are you?"
"I," Itzli said, gaining confidence, "am a man. Barely. I have been changed and discarded, made a servant of sorts to the others, those greater than me, the true pinnacle of the Deus Project. I'm now nothing more than spare parts, picked apart and drained when they need revitalization."
"What the Hell does that mean?" Logan was trying to keep the anger out of his voice but knew he was failing. Badly.
"It's too complicated to explain now! Just know that the last two of the project are loose and have fixed on their prey...they followed them from Mexico, broke the surveillance they hadn unn under for so long..." Itzli's confidence slid and his fear showed naked on his features. "Just...I know how to stop them. Just get me to them and I'll do what I can..."
"Two," Logan muttered. "Two. Damn this is going to be hard..."
"You're lucky," Itzli murmured, "there used to be nearly a hundred of us."
Storm could not stifle her gasp of surprise. "A hundred?"
"Nearly. Could you...could you loosen the ties on my hands? I can't feel my fingers..."
Logan shook his head slightly and Storm murmured "No, I'm sorry." Itzli looked so disappointed that she was nearly moved to loosen them at least a little, but thought better of it. "Itzli, what did Professor Simpson have to do with any of this?"
"Theo? He was nice," the man sighed. "He didn't do bad things to us first gens."
"First gens?" Logan could see familiar river ways beneath him and breathed a silent sigh of relief, the knowledge that they had a little over two hours left in their trek at once comforting and nerve-wracking.
"Those of us who were...manipulated humans. They tested on us, tried to make us what they wanted, but it couldn't be done..." Here he made a noise somewhere between a chuckle and a sob. "Most of us...died horribly. My...my sibling, of sorts, the one who was created with me, she took her own life by swallowing the acid used to clean the stones2 in the Templo de la Muerte." Now he did sob, but swallowed the sound as best he could with a fearful look at Logan. "The first gens were...weak. I was lucky. They found us to be...deficient. We are too easily destroyed, both by ourselves and outside forces." He tapped the side of his head and grinned in an odd approximation of a skull, teeth bared to the gums, skin stretched tightly over his sharp cheekbones. "We go gaa gaa."
"Theo..." Logan prompted, uncomfortable now that he had verbal conformation of the man's rather tenuous mental state.
"He...he found some ancient glyphs and codices, some of the very, very few remaining,3 that told of magic powders, things that animated dead tissue."
Storm nodded. "Some African tribes and groups in the Caribbean believe in zombies, most of which are produced through the use of narcotic powders that mimic death then seem to reanimate the corpse4...I'm familiar with ideaidea."
Itzli nodded somewhat sickly. "Well, it goes further than that. Professor Simpson helped the men, those who worked on the Deus Project, construct the Templo de la Muerte on the site of the ancient one. He also helped find the orchids that produced the pollen they needed to finish the powder."
"Why the temple?" Logan banked sharply, beginning the slow descent towards Bayville.
"All part of the project...the temple in Mexico, the onion-domed church in Russia...it's all part of the artifice..." Itzli looked at Storm pleadingly. "Please? Loosen them a little?"
"No!" she almost shouted. "Finish. We're nearing...where we need to be...and I'll kill you myself if any of those children are injured or dead!"
Logan had never seen her so angered, so fiercely protective. He rather liked it. "You'd better get to talkin', bub, or you'll be on the wrong end of a lightening bolt..."
Itzli gulped audibly. "Professor Simpson didn't know what he was getting into, not really. He died because he wanted to help...well, you. It's my fault...I went to see him, to tell him what I knew. I remembered him from before, when I was new, before they made the second and third gens. Before they made him leave... It wasn't hard to find him. I'm surprised they didn't do it earlier..." He hiccoughed a soft cry and pressed onward. "I'm the last first gen. I...I went with Tlazolteotl because she was strong, she had one of the others with her. She had Micapetlacalli, too."
"Huh?" Logan said, circling lower. "Speak English."
Itzli sighed. "We are called for the gods of the people who made us. I am Itzli. I do not know my name from before. Itzli...he...I...am the god of sacrifice, the knife-bearing god. He who flays with the obsidian blade..." Sniffing, he said, "Tlazolteotl is the goddess who thrives on sin. She punished wrongdoers by...drinking their blood. She is the eater of filth, the devourer of sins..."
Storm felt i "An "And the other? Micapetlacalli?"
"It means 'Box of Death.' The girl, the pale one with the dark eyes, she has it with her..."
"Kitty," Logan breathed. "What the Hell did you do to Kitty?"
"Nothing! I didn't do anything! The box has...has the components of terror. Much, much, terror..."
Storm's eyes whitened and the wind outside the jet picked up to dangerous velocities, lightening crackling in her gaze. "Tell us now or so help me Bright Goddess, I will fry you like a toad on a hotplate."
Itzli developed a most disturbing case of verbal diarrhea. He told them everything, no circumnavigation of the truth, no verbosity. The Deus Project was a joint venture by several nations, developing super soldiers that could not be traced, that could be disposed of easily and cleanly. The powder Professor Simpson discovered interacted disturbingly well with nanotechnology and artificial intelligence, creating beings oograogrammed violence. It was found that a small amount of human essence, blood was best, could make the second gens more life like. The third gens were the ultimate. Itzli said honestly that he did not know what all had changed between the generations, only that the third gens were virtually indistinguishable from humans and many times more violent than their predecessors, capable of acting without direction. The first gens became quickly obsolete, useful only for blood contributions when the third gens became weak or needed to change.
"What do you mean, change?" Logan asked stiffly, dreading the answer.
"What would make the perfect soldier, Logan?" Itzli's voice had taken on low, bitter tones. "They are capable of killing without compunction, they can enter and leave a site without a trace, they need no extra attention and don't even need to be fed. The most perfect thing about the third gens? They can change form with little effortust ust a little blood from the person they want to be, a little help from their skin...presto chango."
"God..." Logan bit back rising bile, the Institute now in sight. "What the Hell did they do?"
Storm spoke softly, traces of trepidation in her voice. "Why did the project end?"
Itzli looked at her, eyes bright with fear. "The third gens went caveman...5 They turned on their creators, the scientists who made them, the military men who helped program them...they were too, too perfect. It was only much later that I found out one of the chief scientists had made them so. He had infected himself with the powder, a super versof wof what made us first gens. Project Deus had decided not to try for a fourth gen, a group that would be like the thirds only from people, like us firsts. This man, Doctor Leon, had made himself fourth gen. Capable of the disintegration of a third gen upon physical death, but with terrible, terrible side effects. He was mad. Mad as a hatter..." Itzli broke in to inappropriate giggles then and Storm backed away slowly, edging towards Logan.
"Under the seat," he said in response to her unasked question. Storm hastily procured the first aide kit and found the pre-filled syringe of tranquilizer. As Itzli laughed, she crept closer, pushing the drug into his neck before he could react strongly. Within moments, he slumped forward then fell. Logan was already landing, sending the smaller man sliding forward even further in the process.
"Logan," Storm said, already rising as he shut the engines down.
"I know..." He laid a placating hand on her arm. "We can do this...Besides, for all we know, Chuck and Hank headed anything off at the pass that may have cropped up."
"I hope so..."


1 Hmmmm...raise your hand if you think I watch waaaaay too much X Files!
2 Sometimes, for heavy duty cleaning, archaeologists will use types of acid on stone.
3 The Conquistadores and missionaries to Middle and South America destroyed the codices written by the Aztecs, Mayas and other societies because they were "heathen." Extremely few remain, mostly in museums in Europe, of all places.
4 Wanna freak yourself out? Look up the story of Clarvius Narcisse,ocumocumented case of a zombie in Haiti. He just sort of appeared one day in the market of his hometown, years after his death. He was verified by family and friends. His story is detailed and tells of the methods of "zombification" the houngans use on people. I don't know the name of the powder-most don't b/c houngans guard it viciously. With good reason, too! Sto Stolen from the X Files episode "Home." Mulder sees a violent crime scene, a couple beaten to death brutally, and he refers to the perp as having gone "caveman."