And The World Trembled
Chapter Five

Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters, New Mutants Wing

He opened his mouth to speak, and nothing came out. His throat closed on the words. He cleared it. The room shook even more.

"If you're going to speak--"

"Why didn't you come for me?"

Mexico

He came, quickly, to fear Rodriguez. The sight of the man would make Julio set the room to trembling, no matter how hard he tried not to. He didn't want to make things tremble. He didn't want Rodriguez to know how scared he was.

They went out three more times over the next four weeks. Rodriguez would beat him into starting the quakes, and when he couldn't control them and they only got worse, Rodriguez would beat him into unconsciousness to stop them. Then more people joined them. He could hear footsteps upstairs, heard voices occasionally loud enough to sink through the earth.

The door opened, and Rodriguez came down.

Julio had tried to be strong. He had. He was fourteen. Small, sure, but he was still fourteen. He should be able to stay strong, be brave. But when he saw Rodriguez coming down the stairs, he couldn't keep from crying. Just like that. He curled up in the corner and hugged his knees. "I can't do it," he said into his skin. "I can't do it."

Rodriguez unhooked the chain and yanked, sending Julio sprawling across the bed. He kept pulling until Julio scrambled to his feet to keep from being dragged up the stairs. At the top, they stopped, and Rodriguez bent to his level.

"You smell," was the first thing he said.

Julio wrapped his arms around himself and tried to stop crying. The whole room was shaking; vibrating, really.

"Now, listen. We have some new members. A sponsor, even. You're going to go out there, and you're going to make the ground shake. And you're not going to say a single damn word. You hear me?"

Julio nodded.

"Good." He opened the door and stepped through. Julio followed.

The three people he'd seen up till that point had doubled in size. Tripled. His heart leapt with hope again. Surely one of these people would help him. One of them would realize this was wrong and--

They were glaring at him. Someone took a step away.

Julio swallowed his fear anyway. "Help," he said. It was no more than a whisper. Rodriguez would be angry if he spoke, and he'd be beaten, but--

"Help," he said, louder, and pulled back against the chain. "Someone help me, please. I want to go home!"

"I said be quiet," Rodriguez snapped. Julio yelped even before the blow hit him, knowing it was going to be bad. His face felt like it exploded, and he dropped to the ground, bruising his knees.

"Help me!" he shouted again, covering his head. Rodriguez kicked him in the leg, then again in the head when he grabbed his thigh. Julio lay on the floor, gasping, both eyes closed tightly. The ground was shaking much harder, now, and he could hear people murmuring.

"It's all right, everyone," he heard Rodriguez say loudly. "It won't get worse than this until we're ready."

Julio could feel blood running down his forehead. His eye hurt too much to open. The world twisted and dropped away when Rodriguez bent down and picked him up, carrying him out of the house. They got in the jeep, and with a small cavalcade of followers drove into the desert.

Julio sat in the back, his head down, trying not to think about what would happen next. They hadn't helped him. All those people standing there while Rodriguez kicked him, and they hadn't done a thing.

He wasn't going to be rescued.

"Shit, Rodriguez, the kid's making the ground shake enough that it's getting hard to drive," the man in front said.

"Cut it out, boy," Rodriguez muttered.

"I'm sorry," he mumbled through swelling lips.

The jeep stopped. He saw Rodriguez get out, knew the man was walking around to his side. Julio started to shake. They'd beat him, now. They'd beat him until the ground split. He already hurt, and he didn't want to hurt anymore, and they were going to hold him down and hit him with that whip Rodriguez had gotten. They were going to hit him and hit him until his skin split again and the ground shook.

"Madre de Dios!" someone said.

Rodriguez opened the door.

Julio covered his face and began to cry.

"Shit!" he heard someone shout.

"Get him out of the car!" Skinny yelled.

"Fuck, I can't, the ground's--"

"Julio--Julio stop--" That was Skinny's voice again, near his ear now.

The car bucked and dropped suddenly.

"Shit! Julio, you're going to sink the damn car!"

It dropped again.

"Julio, stop!"

Someone hit him. Then again. Julio smashed back against the seat, screaming. Someone hit him again.

**

He woke to pain. But that was normal. He couldn't see out of one eye, either. He staggered off the cot and to the mirror over the sink, as if seeing the damage would somehow make it okay.

He stared when he got there. His eye wasn't swollen, like he'd expected. It was covered, wrapped up with a patch over it. With shaking hands, Julio started to pull the bandage off. The door opened.

"Hey, hey, don't do that," Skinny said from the doorway, hurrying down the stairs and setting the tray on the cot. He strode quickly to Julio and pulled his hands away.

Julio's breath came raggedly. His eye was gone. His eye was gone. They'd cut it out or something--

"It's okay, Julio. It's all right. You just--you got all bloodied up, right? But we have a doctor in the group now, and he stitched you back up. Had to like, stitch your eyeball, and so he said to leave that on for a week to let it heal. It's okay."

Julio was shaking. So was the room. The world was spinning. "I can't stand."

Skinny grabbed him by his elbows and hauled him back to the cot. He wouldn’t look Julio in the face. "Well, the doctor said also that you've got a concussion. That we need to stop hitting you in the head. He gave us some sedatives instead, so that's good."

Concussion? Julio put both hands on the bed to try and stay upright while the world whizzed around him.

"From now on, Rodriguez says that we're supposed to put sedatives in your food to keep you calm when we take you out to do the earthquakes. So you don't start them early, like you did last time." Skinny looked at him, finally. "We had to leave the jeep. It's half in a hole, now."

Julio couldn’t say he was sorry. Then the memory of all those people watching while Rodriguez kicked him came back. "They hate me," he said softly. "He hit me and they didn't even say anything."

"Aw, kid," Skinny sighed. The cot dipped as he sat down. "They don't hate you. They just hate what you are."

Julio blinked rapidly, trying to get rid of the tears collecting in his eyes. "But why? I haven't hurt them."

"You destroyed an entire city!" Skinny said. "I mean, you didn't do it on purpose. It's just because you're a mutant. But imagine if every mutant destroyed cities when their powers started. And even after all this time, you still can't control it. What if it happened every time something upset you? And all it takes is just one mutant like Magneto--"

"Who?" Julio asked.

"Magneto. He's this crazy powerful mutant who can kill thousands of people just by thinking about it. He can fly, and he's got these red eyebeams."

Julio shivered.

"Just one of him can kill whole countries. Just one bad mutant. They're saying that Jim Jones was a mutant, a really low level one, and look what he did."

Julio didn't know who Jim Jones was, but said nothing.

"That's why we have to stop them, kid. It's nothing against you, okay? Mutants are just bad news."

Julio nodded silently. "But I still want to go home." He rubbed dirt off his face, cringed, and stopped. He was sore all over. The world was still spinning. "I think… I think my birthday is soon."

"Aw," Skinny sighed. He sat, staring down at his hands. "How about I get you some cake?"

Julio shook his head.

"How old will you be?"

He hesitated. "Fifteen." He didn't feel fifteen. He'd always thought of fifteen year olds as being big and strong, and if anything he seemed to have gotten smaller and weaker over the last months.

"Man, you're just a little guy, aren't you?"

Julio glared at Skinny as best he could, but didn't have the energy to keep it up.

"Look, I'll get some cake and--"

"No," Julio said suddenly. He didn't want cake. He was sorry he'd said it was his birthday. Thinking about it just made him think about home, and that hurt too much. They would be starting school now. Mama would have gotten Oscar new clothes, and given his old ones to Fernando, who would have given his old ones to Angelo. Angelo's old clothes they would have put away for Julio to grow into, and gotten out a box of Angelo's even older clothes that would hopefully fit by now. The girls all got new things, at least one new dress, and everyone got one new pair of shoes.

He closed his eyes tightly and tried to stop thinking about it before he burst into tears.

"All right. No cake." They were silent. "We're calling ourselves the Mutant Right, kid," Skinny said after a minute. "We're gonna use you to stop mutants from hurting people."

Julio couldn't see how, and he thought 'Mutant Right' sounded like they were for mutants. He didn't say either of those things, though.

After a while, Skinny stood and went back up the stairs.

They left him alone for almost four months after that. Skinny said at one point they were trying to figure something out that could aim the quakes for Julio, and until then they didn't really need him. In all that time, Rodriguez only came to see him six times--each time to scream and rant and occasionally try and hit him. They only made him use his powers five times, once with a machine that didn't do anything. They had been very disappointed about that.

Then one day he ate breakfast, and couldn't seem to think right. Half an hour later Rodriguez came down, unlocked his chain, and took him up into the light. Julio's eyes watered and he couldn't see, it was so bright. He staggered and stumbled, his heart pounding slowly and heavily in his chest, and he didn't care that in a little while he was going to be beaten again. He remembered, faintly, Skinny saying that they were going to put sedatives in his food to keep him from panicking. His mind, half drunk and half asleep, thought they'd done a pretty good job.

He was ushered into a new jeep with three other people, and driven once more out into the desert, a trailer dragged along behind. Once there, Skinny held his chain while Rodriguez and the people Julio didn't know pulled out a large machine and set it up.

"We're going to make you into a weapon, kid," Skinny said excitedly.

Julio sank down into the dirt and rested his head against the wheel of the jeep, watching disinterestedly as they put the machine together. His eyes kept falling closed. "I don't want to be a weapon," he said. "I wrecked that city. Wasn't that enough?"

Skinny knelt, putting an arm around his shoulders and shaking him. "It'll be great. Trust me, kid. We're going to make sure no one else dies that shouldn't, and you're going to be how."

Then Rodriguez came for him. He couldn't stand. "Not so much, next time," Rodriguez said to Skinny, then finally picked Julio up and carried him to the machine.

He couldn't bring himself to care as they strapped him in. He could see Rodriguez swinging his whip, flicking it along the ground, and somehow it seemed like a dream. A nightmare. Any minute his mother would come in, telling him he was late for school.

"Shake, Julio," Rodriguez demanded.

Julio let his eyes fall closed. "Can't," he mumbled. Then the whip struck his back. He was yanked out of the sedatives, just like that, pain slicing through the haze. Julio screamed, shocked and afraid because even though he'd known it was coming, he hadn't prepared for it at all. The whip hit him again, and he felt his skin split, and he screamed as power erupted out of him, and he was shaking inside. And then something twisted.

Julio screamed again. He opened his eyes and saw the ridge implode, cracks appearing through it and rocks tumbling down. The machine was pulling at him, yanking at what he could do and forcing it to change. And it hurt. It felt like his brain was on fire, like there were bands around his chest and something was melting his eyes. He was being ripped apart.

Then darkness claimed him.

**

He had been conscious for several hours when Rodriguez came storming into the basement.

Julio wrapped himself more firmly in his blanket and tired to pretend like the other man wasn't there. The room was trembling.

"How are we supposed to use your power if you can't stay awake to create it?" Rodriguez roared, grabbing the end of the blanket and snapping it away. Julio kept his eyes closed and his head covered. "Stupid little mutant!" The bed moved, suddenly, and Julio yelped as Rodriguez tipped it sideways. He spilled to the floor, not moving fast enough to keep the cot from pinning him. He squirmed out from underneath it, then crouched under the sink, watching Rodriguez warily.

Rodriguez glared at him, then finally stormed up and away.

X-Factor Headquarters

He sat there, knowing if he left the room now Jean would suspect something. So he sat there, and tried not to think of home.

She hadn't come to look for him. His mother hadn't wanted a mutant or a killer. How was he supposed to just call her after so many months and say "Hi, Mama! I'm alive!" He put his head in his hands and tried to stop shaking. It didn't matter. He didn't need her.

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