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Last time it wasn’t her fault. This time it could be.
Kitty held very still, physically and psychically, as Cecilia fastened the last set of straps into place; she lay as flat as she could make her body on the plastic platform that would slide, slowly, every so slowly, into the cylinder of the MRI.
If I could survive deep space, she told herself, if Ororo could survive all those times she’s been trapped in small spaces, underground, I can definitely survive a routine medical procedure.
Last time she had certainly survived the experience, but the equipment sure hadn’t.
Sometimes it felt to Kitty like it had been just a day since she could turn solid again, and just a few weeks since she came back, thanks to Magneto, from the harrowing and potentially endless isolation of deep space.
In fact it had been weeks: five since she regained her ability to take solid form; three since Hank made the very thoughtful, appropriate suggestion—seconded by the entirety of X-Club, and vigorously by Cecilia Reyes—that an MRI was in order to see if the body she had now worked pretty much like the one that went to the Breakworld; two since Scott somehow commandeered a proper MRI device from some hospital in San Francisco that owed the X-Men a favor; one since the various techies in X-Club set the thing up and proceeded to feed a prone and slightly anxious Kitty into it (after all, look what happened the last time she interacted with a giant high-tech cylinder).
And one since Kitty turned the entire MRI machine into scrap metal, by absent-mindedly, and impatiently, phasing a finger. A middle finger. Right through what was apparently a CPU. The whole machine made a kind of “zort!” sound and shut down with Kitty inside; and of course she phased out, thus fritzing whatever usable electronics remained inside the machine. It was satisfying in a way (the way shorting out electronics that displeased her would always be satisfying) but also embarrassing. Definitely one of those clumsy Shadowcat moments. Or maybe Sprite moments, or Ariel moments. The feeling went very far back.
The first call she made, after that, was to Scott. The first call Scott made was to Warren, who complained (on speakerphone) that his omega level mutant power was truly his checkbook. (Nobody dissented. Ten people heard.) The second call Scott made must have been the hospital; the third Kitty didn’t hear, but apparently it worked. Here was another MRI, right in the gleaming, if cramped, sickbay of Utopia, and here was Kitty, again. How many of these full-body scans would she have to undergo to make sure the Breakworld tech was out of her body, that her material form was fully Homo superior again?
“Life is first boredom, then fear,” said a poet all mutants from Britain seemed able to quote; Kitty had picked up the tag, along with “They f*** you up, your mum and dad,” in her lighthouse days. (The poet turned out to be a pretty serious anti-mutant bigot, but his words were already canon when people found out.) MRIs, Kitty thought, are first fear, then boredom; why must they take so long?
Also, with contrast? Really? Shouldn’t bits of Breakworld metal just…. show up? Needles on their own didn’t scare Kitty—she’d seen too many other scary things by now—but still: owie. And patience. And more patience. And nothing to read on your own, no way to do recreational math, no tablets, no phones…. just the slow, slow passage of your body through a deafening tube, knowing all of it’s for your own good, and something to listen to, sort of, above the noise, with luck.
It’s like riding a train, she thought. (It’s not like riding a train.) It’s like going into space, she thought. (For sure not ready to go back into space.) It’s like trying and failing to get to sleep on a flat surface. (It’s not. And it’s So Loud. Newer machines were supposedly brighter and quieter, but when you have to borrow equipment this costly, you take the working machine you can get.)
“You’ve got this, katzchen,” Kurt said. Kurt seemed to be sinking into the narrow armchair in the corner of the room; under one arm he had (Kitty strained to see) a hardback on Catholic philosophy by Charles Taylor, and something in German, and both of the novels that Kitty had asked him to read to her, as loud as his sometimes booming voice could get. (She almost hadn’t asked, but figured he’d bring a recording if his voice gave out; and anyway he insisted on being there.)
“Ready?” said Dr. Reyes.
“As ready as this girl will ever be,” said Kitty. And the flat platform began to roll, slowly, slowly…
Don’t phase. Don’t phase. Not even a bit.
Kitty gritted her teeth. Kurt started to read. Would his voice give out? Could she hold out?
“He—for there could be no doubt of his sechs [even after so many years in America, Kurt’s accent still turned x’s into ch’s] though the fashion of his time did something to disguise it…”
The machine thrummed and thrummed. It was almost but not quite deafening. Kitty strained to hear the words Kurt continued to read.
Thrum thrum. Don’t phase don’t phase.
It wasn’t just Kitty’s continued bodily integrity (such as it ever was) on the line here, but also the health of whoever else needed the machine when she was through. X-people got injured a lot, now as ever. If she flipped out and broke another machine…. if she even phased her big toe….
But it was hard. Phasing was what she always did when uncomfortable, or when in danger, or when startled, or when she just couldn’t, anymore. And she had been entirely phased until so recently….
“Were not the bars of darkness in the room, and the yellow pools which chequered the floor, made by the sun falling through the stained glass?”
“STOP!” The voice—authoritative, old, a bit British, but the way old movies are British—boomed over Kurt’s, and over the machine.
Cecilia looked up. Kitty tried to look up and could not.
“This procedure must be performed, I see, but it certainly need not be performed in this extraordinarily time consuming way. Not in the presence of the Master of Magnetism! Dr. Reyes, a word, now, please.”
“Don’t move, katzchen,” Kurt said, in his own voice. “Just don’t move.”
Sounds neither Kitty nor Kurt had heard before, like the scraping of cello bows, filled the chamber. And then other sounds, like a theremin, like a motorcycle engine, like a theremin again.
“You can get up now and move around normally, Kitty.” Dr. Reyes entered the room. “We’re going to need to keep the machine around, but we’ve found, uh, a less intrusive way to operate it. Run time cut to, um—“
“Precisely thirty seconds,” said Magneto, clearing his grey-and-white cape out of the way. “The procedure has now been completed; your day is your own, and Dr. Reyes may take the afternoon to examine the results. There is no reason, in my presence, that this sort of thing should inconvenience those required to undergo it. At least, not if they happen to be mutants.”
Kitty, for once, had no clue what to say, and then realized the answer, deep from childhood. “Shkoyeh,” she stammered, standing and looking around.
“Nishto farvos,” Magneto said.