Sins of the Father

Sins of the Father Chapter Sixty Seven (NC-17)
Disclaimers Apply

A/N Goddess Foxfeather, Queen of Mad Plotbunnies, BUSIEST WOMAN ALIVE (tm), Prophetic Muse, Hamster Witch and Uberbeta...*whew * Last one! InterNutter, TC, Maxwell Pink and Dracena... Thanks for archiving/hosting when you have the time. Text files still okay? ProPhile is Chief Smutmuse and gets a big gold star for his efforts. Morgan gets some nice chamomile tea and a nap, lol. Readers/Reviewers: *glomp * Thank you!!!! There are going to be a few loose ends here and yes, they will be picked up but not necessarily in the next story, which is going to be less angsty and more light and smutty, lol. After this is a little short ficlet THEN the "big" story. So, thank you lots and lots for reading/reviewing! *happy dance *


Kurt had a vague recollection of the trip back to the Institute but it was blurred with sleep and a crushing headache. He knew he had resisted attempts to feed him and cajole him into a meeting, heading, with Remy's help, straight to bed to curl up under the covers-without Remy's assistance for the latter. He was determined to sleep until he absolutely could not anymore, which is how he found himself wandering to the kitchen some time around seven the following evening, slightly disoriented and bleary eyed. Someone had left a tray of sandwiches and a jug of juice by his bed while he slept, and he suspected Kitty because he could smell her perfume, but he was still famished by the time he finished. The mansion was too quiet, like it was holding it's breath and waiting for something. As he passed the downstairs study, he heard muffled conversation, male voices speaking with urgency and not a little anger. He paused to see if he could make anything out but the voices never became clear enough to even determine the speakers, much less the content. Shuffling towards the kitchen, Kurt noticed, out of the corner of his eye, a small girl standing in the corner near the door. Even as he turned to face her, she disappeared. He stood and blinked, staring. "Okay, Wagner," he muttered, "you need either more or less sleep..."
Scott stared into his coffee, long since cold and starting to separate out the cream, not even looking up when Kurt came in the kitchen. "Hey," he said tiredly, giving the drink a stir. "You missed it."
"Missed what?" Kurt yawned, reaching into the topmost cabinet for some cereal.
"Everything..." Scott shoved his chair back with an audible scrape and put his cup in the sink noisily. "I'm going back over to the boathouse... You see Jean, tell her that I'll leave the door unlocked."
Kurt stood, one hand in the cabinet, one on the counter, staring after Scott. A loud slam from the foyer made him jump, a fine rain of blue fur speckling the counter as a result. "Scheisse," he hissed.
"What're you doing?"
"Shedding," he replied brusquely, finding the dustpan in the pantry. "Where is everyone?"
Jubilee grinned and headed for the fridge. "I don't know about everyone else, but me and Remy are upstairs being glad he isn't dead. I'm down on a water break." She waved the bottle of water overhead as she turned to head back to her room. "Oh, the Professor wants you to see him ASAP. He's probably in the downstairs study with Doctor Beck still."
Kurt groaned and dumped the fur in the trash. He did not relish the idea of a personalized version of an "I'm okay, you're okay, everyone else is highly suspect" meeting. Setting his jaw defiantly, he grabbed the box of cereal and a bottle of juice and marched to the study, switching his grasp on the juice to his tail so he could knock on the door. "Professor?" he called as he knocked. "Jubilee said you needed to see me."
The door swung open to reveal a very tired-looking Doctor Beck, five o'clock shadow quickly heading towards full beard, hair mussed and standing at odd angles, staring down at him. "You sleep too much, even for your metabolism," he said by way of greeting.
Kurt blinked and stared after him for a second as the doctor turned and headed back into the room. Following, Kurt shut the door behind him and shook himself to gain some sense of conversational equilibrium. "Professor?" he said again, finding the man in question near the mantle, his hand folded and eyes focused on some point in the air Kurt could not see. "Jubilee..."
"Yes," he replied. "I felt it best to let you sleep off the stress and just have this talk with you one on one when you awakened, instead of making the others wait until you were up." Professor Xavier turned his wheelchair to face Kurt and nodded to the low coffee table, indicating that Kurt should put down his food. "Doctor Beck had to leave soon so we had best make this quick. Or as quick as possible."
Kurt had the distinct feeling that Doctor Beck's impending hasty departure was due to the Professor's request than any pressing matter elsewhere. "Okay," Kurt said slowly, sitting on the sofa across from the desk and shifting so that he faced both men. "What do I need to know?"
Doctor Beck vented a harsh sigh. "First, what do you NOW know? Specifically about the Pantheon Project. You were one of the first civilians to come in contact with the results of the program, unfortunately after the supporting mechanisms failed..." He peered at Kurt a shade blearily himself, seemingly lacking any meaningful sleep.
Kurt licked his lips and glanced at the Professor, who made a 'go on' gesture, a negligent wave of his fingers. "Well, I know they were made to destroy us..."
"No," Doctor Beck sighed. "Not even close." He turned on the Professor and glared. "What have you been telling these children? Filling their heads with misinformation..."
"I told them," Professor Xavier said tightly, "what I knew. And when it became apparent that I did not know the entire truth, I stopped telling them anything. Thanks to your...organization... I have broken the trust of the only people who's opinions matter to me. I have created a chasm in this Institute and in our private lives courtesy not only of your policy of withholding information but also my own blind trust."
"Well," Doctor Beck said after a moment, "that will teach you to do that again."
Kurt felt the headache start throbbing again. "Bitte, what is going on? What do you mean, misinformation?"
"Mutantkind is not so secret as you might suspect," Doctor Beck began. "Your status as ubermensch has been rather a point of interest to certain government groups and civilian contractors, namely BioLogic."
The teenager sat up straighter, the name triggering a memory. "BioLogic...we had to do a report on them last year in science, when we were still at Bayville High. Weren't they sued by some consumer groups over genetically altered soybeans or something?"1
A smile flitted across the doctor's face. "Yes, they were. A nice bit of diversion, if you ask me. The boys in R&D were really thinking that month. It's like a magician, waving his left hand to distract you while stuffing a dove down his pants with his right. I'm sure you don't even remember the other BioLogic story that broke in the news that week, about the human cloning experiments. It was treated as an unfounded rumor, actually, so that went a long way in helping us to remain under the public's radar in terms of our true nature."
"Wait, wait..." Kurt was on his feet, starting to pace between the two men, his hunger momentarily forgotten. "Human...cloning?"
"Technically untrue, since we weren't cloning humans at all." Doctor Beck sat on the windowsill, his feet barely touching the ground. "We were manipulating mutant DNA in order to create a more perfect group... We did not want the perfect soldier, per se, but the perfect policeman."
Professor Xavier sighed. "A certain group that is not quite on the up and up within the government wanted to keep an eye on...er...the mutant threat, as we are called. BioLogic felt the best way to do this, when they received the contract, was not to create some tracking device as was originally requested but rather to get a spy inside the gates. Who better to watch mutants than other mutants?"
"The project, however, spawned out of control." Doctor Beck looked down at his hands for a moment before turning his eyes to Kurt with a determined gleam. "Part of the reason we kept the entire situation from your Professor Xavier was because it was not a need to know basis. You were not being actively attacked by the pantheonics until recently...by the time we caught up to the remaining rogues, it was a bit after the fact. The project had gone awry five years ago, as soon as the second gen was created and allowed to run riot over the first. It was no longer a proper experiment much less a proper creation arc. Rather, it was chaos. BioLogic suffered dissension in the ranks and the branch which control the Pantheon Project was allowed far too much leeway..." He sighed and passed a hand over his tired eyes. "Poena was the worst of the lot."
Kurt came to rest next to Professor Xavier and frowned. It was clear the doctor was tired from the nonlinear path of his speech. "Poena?" he murmured. "She is dead, now..."
"You cannot kill what was never truly alive," Doctor Beck said flatly.
Professor Xavier cringed visibly. "She was as much alive as you or I. So were Ernie and Aggie and Annie... More lives lost to BioLogic, to human greed and ignorance." He rolled forward menacingly. "Playing God, Doctor Beck, never gets you to heaven."
He raised a brow. "Poena," he replied, addressing Kurt, "was the last of the first gens but with fifth gen intelligence. She was the last one which required actual human blood to survive. Your Amara was only too happy to provide that... Magneto was very clever in selecting her for that mission, if I do say so myself... The other three were fifth gens, less human than creation. They did not even breathe, really. They didn't quite need to." He shrugged and stretched out his legs, looking more serious than Kurt had ever seen anyone look before. "Poena was far more intelligent than we gave her credit for. She was the one who brought it to the attention of her creators that Bayville has the highest concentration of mutants in the known world, not counting the Morlocks in New York. They move, though, and are not a static population. You," he nodded, encompassing the Institute and further, the Brotherhood, "are a constant. You are prime targets for the Pantheon."
"Targets? I thought you said they were merely policing us," Kurt snapped. "You're lying to us about even this!"
"I do not lie. You just don't listen." He crossed to Kurt, stopping just short of the two mutants. "The remains of the pantheonics have been returned to the labs upstate where they will be destroyed. Poena's plan failed. Our mistake was making them autonomously intelligent."
"Plan..." Kurt reeled back. "Professor Xavier, what is he talking about?"
"Poena betrayed Magneto," he sighed. "She did not follow his orders. From what little we could gather from Firestar's questioning of Roulette and Proudstar, Magneto had discovered Poena's divergence within hours of her arrival here. Amara's presence and ready willingness to treat her as a true goddess were more than enough to make the plan seem viable. She wanted to break away, take the other three with her and start their own group, to put it simply. She wanted to fulfill what she thought her true purpose was..."
"Destroy mutants," Kurt sighed. "All of us."
"Except those she could force to capitulate," Doctor Beck pointed out. "Amara would have survived. And Rahne, because of her wolf like nature. Poena was deeply encoded with her mythology, like all of the first gens were. She was Roman and wolves were quite meaningful to ancient Romans."
Kurt felt dizzy, partially from hunger and partially from confusion. "But...it's over now, ja? All over?"
"Nothing is ever over," Doctor Beck said grimly. "Magneto still has control of the lab facility, clear and legal. This is no longer a government backed project so they do not have any say over closing it and frankly, the man has more money than God and can literally buy himself time." He shook his head and tried to smooth the errant strands into some semblance of order. "The only thing that's over are the four Pantheonics that are now dust on the floor."
"Poena's head," Kurt blurted, feeling a new twinge of sickness. "Kali took it...There's still Kali and Shiva..."
Doctor Beck drew back, looking confused himself. "Pardon me?"
"Kali and Shiva, Hindu gods? They were the ones who killed the others... Maybe even Phobos and Demos, too."
Doctor Beck blanched. "The Pantheonics were assigned deity names as a coding device. Each branch of BioLogic chose regional mythology-Poena from the lab near Rome, for example. The only exception was Annie, Ananda rather. Doctor Singh named her after a Hindu concept... she was created here in New York several years ago..." Doctor Beck narrowed his eyes. "We have no lab in India."

A/N I split this chapter in two. It was just TOO LONG, lol. The last half will be sent out in the AM and will answer the question of where Storm is, etc and have the SMUT!
1 ConAgra, the largest producer of grain products in the US, was sued a year or so back due to Frankenfoods, namely, genetically modified corn. They were using corn that had thus far only been used for livestock feed due to the lack of definitive research on human consumption of modified foods. People got pissed when they found out their corn chips and taco shells were mutants.