And The World Trembled
Chapter Six

Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters, New Mutants Wing

There was silence on the other end. The nightstand shook, falling sideways, and Julio grabbed for the base of the phone. He was crying, and bit down on his lip to keep from making any noise. Slowly, he sank down to the floor.

The word, when it came, was quiet. "Julio?"

Just that, and it almost broke him.

Mexico

"Did she ever look for me?" Julio asked, listening to his stomach grumble and staring at the sandwich they'd brought him for lunch. His wrist bones were sticking out, and his elbows, too. They'd dropped his feedings down to twice a day, and sometimes not even that.

"Who, kid?"

Skinny had grown distant over the last three months, as they tried to find a way to keep Julio conscious so they could use him. It wasn't working.

"My mother."

Skinny sat back on his heels, video tape in one hand. He watched Julio thoughtfully. "Yes," he said finally. "She did."

Julio looked up. His chest tightened, and he felt tears behind his eyes again. It seemed like all he ever did was cry, anymore.

"Rodriguez went to her. Told her you were a mutant. Told her what you did in the city, and that it had been an accident. She said we could keep you. That no son of hers was a killer or a freak, and if they were then she didn't want them."

Julio felt his stomach drop. The room trembled, then stilled. He put the sandwich down uneaten. "She did?"

Skinny nodded.

"But--but Rodriguez probably lied to her. He probably told her--"

Skinny just shook his head wordlessly.

"But I didn't mean to," Julio whispered.

"Sorry, kid." Skinny put the tape in the VCR and stood. "Rodriguez wants you later. Just so you know."

Julio stared into space while Skinny left, then set his sandwich aside. He curled up, hugging his knees, and watched the far wall. He felt very cold.

**

Rodriguez was smiling, laying out syringes on a towel at the end of the cot. "These," he said, touching each of them in turn, "are adrenaline shots. To keep you awake."

Julio just stared at them, numb and dreamy, high on sedatives. The room wasn't even shaking.

"And, because the doctor suggested that whipping you might cause infection, these are a cocktail. They're going to hurt like hell."

Julio continued to stare. Rodriguez wrapped the syringes up carefully, putting them in a briefcase. "Let's go."

The drive to the site was enough to make Julio feel something other than dreamy. Fear, mostly. The ground began to tremble ever so slightly, and Rodriguez chuckled and stroked hair out of Julio's face. The machine had been left set up out in the desert by the ridge. Julio supposed they must really be in the middle of nowhere, if they weren't worried about people seeing it.

They gave him the adrenaline shot first. He could feel it buzz through him, and it made him vaguely ill. Ill, and very alert. The trembling grew.

They strapped him into the machine. Strapped him in, and injected the other syringe. Pain spread through his arm, following the liquid, and he began to scream. He screamed and he screamed and he screamed, his voice turning shrill when the pain of the machine joined the pain of the injection. He screamed, and his vision turned red and yellow, and finally vanished completely. But the pain wouldn't go away.

**

As much as he was able, he stopped living. He laid on his cot and he stared at the wall, and he ignored Skinny. Once, he didn't eat until Rodriguez force-fed him, but it hurt less if he ate on his own. So he ate enough to make Rodriguez happy. Enough to keep himself alive. He tried not to think about home. He tried not to think about anything.

He didn't succeed.

And then they wanted him to kill a person. Not exactly. Not really. They wanted him to destroy a house. They wanted to channel his power to a finer point, to make sure it could be done. He didn't know why that bothered him. After all, he'd killed more than fifty people. But it did. For that, he woke back up.

"I won't do it." He stared at the breakfast he hadn't eaten because he knew it had sedatives. Knew because Skinny had told him about their great plan, about what they were going to do today.

Rodriguez was looking at him, eyeing him warily. "I've force fed you once."

"I'll shake us apart before I let you force feed me again," Julio said, and they both knew it was true. He couldn't control it, but he knew the food had sedatives, which meant pain, and the fear would do it for him.

Rodriguez looked at him consideringly. Then he left. He came back some time later with the pills Julio hadn't had in months. "Take them."

Julio almost said no. He should have said no. But if he took them, his powers would be dampened, and he couldn't be forced to kill. He took them.

Rodriguez came down an hour later with another man. Julio stood and backed away, but he was chained and the men were stronger. He didn't understand until the man had him pinned and unable to move, and Rodriguez came forward with two injections. Julio screamed before they hit his skin, because he knew what they were.

The cocktails only ever lasted ten minutes. When Julio pulled out of it, sobbing and crying and screaming and too high on adrenaline to pass out, he realized he'd been tied to the bed. Rodriguez was smiling at him. Rodriguez carefully picked another syringe up off the towel, and tapped it. And smiled.

It went on for forty minutes. Julio was hysterical, twisting against restraints until his wrists and ankles were bloody and torn, sobbing and wanting nothing more than to sink into oblivion. He would have promised anything, but please stop, please stop please.

The next day, they went out to the house. Julio destroyed it, and only cried afterward.

Skinny told him later, while spoonfeeding him chicken soup because he couldn't lift his arms, that the man hadn't been home.

Julio told himself his eyes were only watering because the soup was hot. That was all.

A week later they went to the States.

**

It was the last time he was ever going to be strapped into the machine, though he didn't know it. He didn't scream. He didn't kill anyone, either, because other mutants appeared and took him away. Their doctor gave him a physical, but didn't give him any shots. The lab began to tremble when Julio saw the needles, and Hank just set them aside as if he hadn't been intending to use them anyway.

It took another three days for Bobby to come to him, to offer to let him use Bobby's phone to call his mother. His mother who hated mutants (and who could blame her, if they killed people like he did?) and hated murderers (which he was) and hated him.

That was okay. He hated her. She hadn't come for him. He hated her.

Carefully, he put the duck phone back on the cradle. He sat for a while longer on Bobby's bed, listening to the noises of the house. Then he stood and walked out of the room. The light still hurt his eyes, if he stayed out too long. Hank said that would go away in a few days' time. He didn't flinch at most of the men, and none of the women. Cameron Hodge, though, terrified him. His voice came to him in his dreams, faint words heard through a doorway twelve feet away. "We'll build a machine to focus his powers. That'll work."

He didn't tell the other mutants. They liked Hodge. He was no one, and wasn't certain of what he had heard, anyway.

He walked into the living room, pausing outside the door to listen for that voice. No sign of it. He edged in.

Hank was sitting with his feet on the head of a chair, his head dangling down. He looked at Julio when he entered.

"Did you call your parents?" Hank asked brightly.

Julio hesitated. "Yeah," he lied at last.

"And what did they say?"

Julio felt his eyes burn, but he didn't cry. That, he'd finally learned. "They said I should stay here. My mama says America is a better place to do things than Mexico."

Hank's expression was… odd. He slid to his feet, and walked slowly to where Julio stood. He put a ham-sized hand on Julio's shoulder, watching him. "Are you… do you want that? After everything you've been through…"

Julio nodded, refusing to look up. He wanted to wrap his arms around Hank and cry, and he couldn't do that. He was on his own, now. He had to be strong, like his mother had said. "That's what I want, too."

Hank was silent for a long time. "All right," he said finally. "You'll have a place here for as long as you need one."

And that was that.

**

Epilogue

Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters, New Mutants Wing "Julio? Julio, is that you? No--it can't be--they said--they told me you were dead."

Dead. Not a mutant. Not a killer. Dead. Something around his chest released, and the room stopped shaking. Dead.

"Julio, Madre de Dios, Julio, is that you?"

He nodded, found his voice and croaked, "Yeah. Me."

"Oh my baby, my baby boy, I thought you were dead--they said you'd died, Julio you're alive! Where are you? Are you safe? I love you, I love you so much."

He dragged a hand across his wet eyes, leaning back against the bed, relief making him weak. "Mama, they took me and--and they said--they said--they took me--" he had to stop and just breathe. "They told me you'd looked for me and stopped, because I was--" and he stopped, terrified suddenly of what she might think.

"Julio? What, baby? Julioito, tell me. It's all right."

"Because I'm a mutant," he whispered at last. Then, even lower, "And because I killed people."

Silence. "You killed people? Julio, how? Why?"

"I didn't mean to," he said. The room was shaking again. "Maria was going to hurt me and I panicked. I started an earthquake."

A long pause. "The earthquake they said you died in." It was a statement, not a question. Julio didn't respond.

"Julio," she said again, quietly. "That is terrible. But you are my son. No matter what, I love you."

He couldn't keep from crying, then. It came out of him, three years' worth of tears and months' worth of torture, and he couldn't stop crying.

She had hated him. She loved him. She'd thought he was dead.

They'd lied. They were kidnappers, but somehow, that had never occurred to him.

His mother was still speaking, crying too, telling him over and over how much she'd missed him, how much she loved him, and he couldn't stop crying.

"Julio, Julio I love you. I love you. Come home. Come visit."

He nodded, rubbing his wet face on the bed. "I will. I promise. Soon. I want to come home. Mama--I missed you. They said you didn't want me." He didn't mean to say that.

"I will always love you," she said, her voice choking. "Always. Oh, my baby. Come home."

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