Terminal cancer ward, Empire State Hospital, Manhattan. The past.
The hospital room is dark, the shades pulled down over the windows to prevent the daylight outside from entering the room. As the teenage girl enters, the sickly-looking woman on the bed turns to look at her. She is bald, thin, and deathly pale. Wires, tubes, and machinery are all hooked up to her frail body.
"Hello, Momma," the girl whispers, her lower lip trembling. "I just thought I'd see how you're doing."
"Melody." The woman chokes the name. "Come closer to me, honey... This hospital bed's a pain..."
Slowly, almost timidly, the girl steps forward into the dim light streaming through the shaded window. Tears run down her cheeks, her face portraying her emotions.
"Oh, Melody..." the woman sighs, wanting desperately to console her daughter. "What can I say? The doctors..."
"I know," the girl sobs. "The cancer's killing you, isn't it, Mom?"
Despite her daughter's tears of sorrow, the woman smiles weakly. "Oh, come now, Melody. We all have to go some time, don't we? My time is just coming early, that's all."
"Oh, Momma!" the daughter cries as she rushes to the side of the bed, burying her face in her mother's bosom. "The doctors... can't they do anything for you?"
"I'm... afraid not, dear," the woman manages. "The cancer... is too far developed... at this stage."
No more words are shared between them as they embrace. For minutes they sit, holding each other and crying. Then, suddenly, something happens that will change the girl's life forever.
At first it feels like a little spark ignites within her. Then that spark grows to a flickering flame, and then a raging inferno. Frightened, the girl recoils back from her mother, only to find that a strange energy is being sucked out of her. Her eyes are blank, and with frightening clarity, the girl realizes that somehow she is draining that energy from her own mother.
She screams as she literally watches the life ebb from her mother's body. A small burst of energy explodes outward from the girl, throwing her across the room and into the far wall. She slides slowly to the floor, the sound of the steady beep of the heart-rate monitor loud in her ears.
She cowers in the corner as three nurses rush in, immediatley trying to revive her lifeless mother using C.P.R.
"Get Doctor Feldman in here, stat! And for God's sake, get that girl out of here!"
(Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation - Jeff)
One of the nurses rushes over to the girl, who is in shock. She lifts her to her feet be her arm. "Come on, honey," she says, her voice sugar-coated and overly sweet. "Follow me."
As the nurse leads the girl out of the room, the doctor runs in. "What's her status?"
"Not good. Lost the pulse suddenly, like something just... shut her off."
"I... see. Time."
"5:26 P.M."
"Patient's name?"
"Jacobs, Judith K."
The Bronx...
The night is cold. The air is crisp and almost biting, bringing the girl named Melody Jacobs back to reality. A cloud of hot breath escapes her mouth as she exhales, the painful memories subsiding now. She does not mind the cold... in fact, she welcomes it. Somehow it comforts her, calms her nerves.
Hesitantly, she crosses the street. She is aware of the odd stares she receives from other pedestrians and passers-by as she makes her way to the opposite sidewalk. Nervously, she pulls her coat collar over her face to shield her from their prying eyes. They mustn't see the metal neuro-locks implanted on her face. They mustn't find out that she is a mutant.
As casually as possible, she turns the corner and enters a dark alley. She knows full well the danger of doing so, but she does not care. There is only one thing on her mind...
She must feed. Soon.
Then she sees them, a group of downtrodden vagrants huddling around a fire blazing in a garbage can. The reek of death is all around them: the homeless and the hopeless, the depressed and the oppressed. Their lives have no meaning for them, and as such, the thought of suicide weighs heavily on their minds. She senses this, and makes her move.
"Excuse me," she says quietly and as innocently as possible as she creeps from the shadows of the dark alley. "My car broke down, if you could just..."
"Well, well... What do we have here?" one of the men says as he turns to face her. His face is black with dirt and grime and he smells of cheap liquor. Perfect, she thinks.
He approaches her slowly, a toothless grin smeared across his stubbly face. He reaches out to grab her, but she grabs him instead. Immediately, the man begins to twist and convulse violently, his life energy draining from his body. Plasma surges from the man and enters the girl's neuro-locks, powering her and illuminating her body in an aura of pink energy.
Limply, the homeless man falls to the ground. The girl stands over his body for a moment, daring the others to attack her. Instead they run the other direction, disappearing in the blackness of the night. Their shouts echo off the buildings' concrete and brick facades.
"She's a freakin' mutie!"
"She just zapped McCormick! Killed 'im!"
"Let's get outta 'ere!"
"C'mon! Go! Go!"
Newly revitalized with a fresh death-charge, the girl turns to go, her hunger satiated. Yet she hesitates a moment to look back at the man's lifeless body.
"Forgive me," she whispers as a single tear rolls down her face.
Hours later, a dark form walks purposefully through the now-abandoned alleyway. The figure approaches the homeless man's dead body, and kneels down to inspect it.
'Just as I have suspected,' thinks the ageless being known as Apocalypse. He stands once more to his full height, the light from the street lamp nearby glinting off his blue armor. 'The girl has been here. She is feeding, no doubt. Increasing her power with each life she takes.'
He ponders this for a moment. He has always believed in the survival of the fittest, and this girl is no different. She has the will, and the power, to survive.
"Yes, Threnody, my dear," he says aloud, sending several rats and and other vermin scurrying for cover at the sound. "You shall be a perfect Horseman of the Apocalypse."
With that, Apocalypse disappears in a brilliant flash of light, leaving the rodents to resume their scavenging.
Saint Raymond's Cemetery, several blocks away from the alley...
The graveyard is deserted except for the solitary figure standing over a lonely tombstone. This is probably the closest thing the girl has to a home. Ever since the mutant Nate Grey abandoned her here, left her to fend for herself after she was attcked by Madelyne Prior, the girl named Threndoy has adopted this cemetery as her own place. A place where she can escape from the stares and the whispers of the normal folk. A place to rest... in peace.
(see X-Man #25 for all the details - Jeff)
Energy flares around her as she stares blankly at the tombstone. She reads and re-reads the inscription, her mind a swirling pool of emotions...
