HOUNDS
Rachel:
The first time I saw Laura was in that ridiculous nightclub in New York City.
She was dressed in a knock-off of one of Wolverine's old outfits and serving drinks when we found her. Everything - the environment, the way she was dressed, and what she was doing - was crazy and off-kilter. And, of course, she was so young...
So I didn't recognize her at first.
There was a fight and she got away from us. Oddly, it was the way she ran that finally gave her away to me. Men and women run differently - it has to do with hip structure and different centers of gravity. But Laura ran more like a man than a woman, and I recognized that.
It was only then that I realized that I knew her. I knew her from the future - my future.
In that future, the Sentinels managed to take over all of North America and were almost finished with their program of genetic cleansing. The surviving human population was torn by unrest. Too many people remembered what it was like before the Sentinels. The irony of my future was that the human population often rebelled against the Sentinels who were supposedly 'saving' them.
The first time I met Laura was in that New York City nightclub.
The other first time I met her was in the ruins of Omaha.
Most of Omaha's downtown was ablaze and the flames were turning the night into a red-orange parody of day. The constant rattle of rifle and machine-gun fire was occasionally punctuated by the boom of heavy weapons and the shriek of Sentinel boot-jets.
The older Hound didn't say a word. She just reached out, grabbed Rachel by the waist, and dragged her behind a wrecked pickup truck.
A sniper's bullet suddenly split the air where Rachel's head had been a half-second earlier.
Rachel reacted without thinking and slashed a vicious elbow-strike towards the other Hound's throat. If it had landed, the blow would have crushed her target's larynx. But the older Hound easily blocked the blow and then slapped Rachel so hard that she was knocked flat.
"Stop," growled the older Hound.
Shaking her head in an effort to clear it, Rachel rolled up against the body of the pickup truck and crawled up into a seated position. Then she used the back of her wrist to wipe some blood away from her mouth.
Both women cringed as the underground fuel tanks of a nearby gas station detonated in a brilliant orange fireball. They cowered together against the body of the pickup truck until the hail of falling debris finally ended.
Rachel didn't know the Hound who had just saved her life. She was at least ten years older than Rachel and had short black hair and green eyes. Her body armor was a mixture of black, brown, and dark green and didn't have the metal studs that were a part of the system in Rachel's body-suit that controlled her psionic powers. And unlike Rachel, her face wasn't covered with a jagged pattern of Maori-like tattoos.
Rachel automatically checked the other Hound's control collar. The number twenty-three was engraved into it. Rachel's collar sported was numbered forty-six.
The older Hound reached up and nudged the side-view mirror of the half-demolished pickup truck upwards a notch. She was using it to scope out a building several blocks away.
"Where's your handler?" asked the older Hound, her eyes still focused on the mirror.
"Dead. Mortar fire," answered Rachel as she rose to a low crouch.
The older Hound's lips quirked, "It's a bad day to be a boss. The sniper that almost got you, got my keeper."
"Where's the sniper?"
"That big brick building down the street from here. Seven stories tall. An old advertising for chewing tobacco is painted on the wall facing us."
"Just give me a direction, a distance, and an elevation," sighed Rachel.
The older Hound frowned thoughtfully and pointed while still remaining under cover.
"Two hundred and fifty meters that way. He's on the roof - call it thirty meters up."
Rachel nodded and then concentrated for about a half a minute. There was a series of dull thumps from up ahead. Rachel nodded in satisfaction.
"Okay, he's gone."
The older Hound cocked her head at Rachel, "What did you do?"
Rachel shrugged, "Pulled the pins from his grenades."
The older Hound examined Rachel closely and then a grim smile appeared on her face.
"Cool," said the older Hound.
They spent the next few days slipping through the ruins - killing snipers and taking out enemy patrols and observation posts. The older Hound would find the enemy, Rachel would hit them from a distance, and then the older Hound would close to finish off any survivors.
Both Hounds refused to think too much about what they were doing. It wasn't as if they really had much choice.
The older Hound took a bullet in the thigh the morning after they met. Rachel watched in amazement as she used her claws to cut the slug out of her leg. The wound healed completely in a matter of minutes.
Getting shot at doesn't automatically make two people into friends. But it does make them into partners pretty quickly. The two Hounds settled into an efficient pattern of seek and destroy, their talents neatly complementing one another.
Eventually, the enemy that still proudly called itself the United States Army gave up and retreated up the Missouri river valley, towards Sioux City. Sentinel and airmobile forces set off in pursuit.
In the afternoon of the third day after they met, the radios in their control collars gave the two Hounds their recall orders. They headed south along 13th street and found a small, mostly intact house just north of Interstate 80. They settled into the house and waited for the chopper that would pick them up.
Rachel was curled up on a battered couch in what was left of the house's living room, trying to catch some sleep. She wasn't having any luck.
"Hey," said the older Hound.
Rachel looked up as something arced through the air towards her. The younger girl snagged it in midair using her telekinesis. It was a can of pork and beans.
A spoon followed. Rachel caught that in midair as well.
Suddenly ravenously hungry, Rachel sat up and grabbed the can and the spoon, "I haven't had this stuff since I was a kid."
"You're still a kid," said the older Hound dismissively.
"Piss off," Rachel said idly. She concentrated on the can and popped open the top. Then she hungrily dug in.
The older Hound used a claw to decapitate her can. Then she used her fingers to scoop out the beans.
When they were done, they simply tossed the cans into a corner of the room. There wasn't much point to neatness. The Sentinels would make an example of Omaha, and by the time they were done, there wouldn't be much left.
"Any more food?" Rachel asked. Hounds were always kept hungry, even when they weren't on a mission. It was another way to control them.
The older Hound shook her head. Over a decade into the rule of the Sentinels, the country's economy was long wrecked. They were lucky to have found two stray cans of food.
"What's your name?" the older Hound asked suddenly.
"Rachel. What's yours?"
The older Hound hesitated before answering, "No name."
Rachel frowned disgustedly, "Look, just what the hell is your problem?"
The older Hound shook her head, "I've always been number twenty-three. For a while I thought I had a name, but I was just kidding myself. I'm just number twenty-three and I always will be."
Rachel stared at the other woman for a moment, "What did your handler call you?"
"Bitch."
Rachel's lips quirked, "He seems to have been a good judge of character."
The older Hound just gave Rachel a crooked smile.
They were still waiting and still hungry. They took turns searching the neighborhood for more food, but they didn't find anything.
Rachel was half-dozing on the couch when she saw the older Hound reach into an equipment pouch on her belt and pull something out. It was a worn and cracked leather wallet.
"What's that?" Rachel asked idly as the older Hound flipped open the case and looked inside.
"Nothing."
Rachel grinned and reached out. The wallet slipped out of the surprised older Hound's hand and flew over to Rachel.
The only thing inside was a picture. It showed a short and powerful-looking older man with an odd haircut. He had his arms around the older Hound - who was much younger in the picture - and they were both smiling at the camera. In a corner of the picture, someone had written in a very precise hand, "Logan & Laura - The Best They Are At What They Do!"
"Give it back!" the older Hound snarled as she jumped to her feet. Her claws were out.
Rachel hastily flipped the wallet back. The older Hound caught it and immediately shoved it back into her equipment pouch.
"Sorry," Rachel said quietly. "That was out of line."
The older Hound was silent for a long, frozen, moment. Then she nodded her head and relaxed.
Rachel tilted her head up. Off in the distance, she could hear the faint thudding of rotors.
"Our ride," said the older Hound idly as she stepped over to a shattered window and craned her neck to get a look.
With an exhausted sigh, Rachel got to her feet. At the window, the older Hound narrowed her eyes as she examined the helicopter that was heading towards their position. Her entire body tensed as her keen eyes picked out the symbols on the side of the chopper.
"Go to the next block east of here," the older Hound ordered Rachel. "Wait there until... Wait there until you don't have any choice but to come back."
Rachel blinked in surprise, "What are you..."
"Rachel, shut up and do as you're told!" snarled the older Hound as she turned to face the younger woman.
"Dammit, what's the problem?!" Rachel demanded.
"The men picking us up are Purity Guards," the older Hound answered.
Beneath the dirt and tattoos, it was still possible to see Rachel's face turn white. Purity Guardsmen were the worst of the worst - men and women indoctrinated from birth to believe that mutants and 'genetic-traitors' could be used, abused, and killed at will. Some of the most terrible things that Rachel had seen in her young life had been the handiwork of the PGs.
"What are they doing here?" Rachel asked in a suddenly shaky voice.
The older Hound made a helpless gesture with her hounds. "Maybe they're just the closest unit with a helicopter. Or maybe it has to do with both of us losing our handlers. Now get out!"
A stubborn look appeared on Rachel's face, almost banishing the fear in her eyes.
"I'm staying with you," Rachel said quietly.
The older Hound shook her head angrily, "You owe me your life. Now it's time to pay me back."
Rachel hesitated. The sound of the rotors was becoming louder.
"Please," asked the older Hound softly. "I know what I'm doing. But I can't do it if you're here. Just do as I say."
Rachel nodded and bolted for the back door. The older Hound turned to face the front door as the chopper landing in the street began blowing dust and debris through the shattered windows.
It didn't take long for the PGs to enter the house. There were four of them in gray and black urban camouflage. Three of the men were carrying pulse-plasma rifles. The leader was young - not yet in his thirties - and was moderately handsome in a nondescript-yet-physically-fit kind of way.
As the officer looked over the older Hound, she noticed that his eyes had the peculiarly dead quality of a man who'd long since decided that any kind or amount of killing was a perfectly acceptable solution to a wide range of problems.
"Where's the other one?" he asked calmly as his eyes trailed up and down the older Hound's body. The Guardsmen behind him were looking at her in the same, hungry way.
"Scavenging. She'll be back soon, sir," the older Hound said carefully. If she was too obsequious, the PGs would smell trouble. But if she challenged them in any way, they wouldn't hesitate to kill her - and probably Rachel as well. Once the Purity Guard started murdering people, they tended not to stop.
The leader was still looking at the older Hound's body. He nodded slowly as if making a decision. Then he made a twitching motion with his right hand.
The neural circuitry in the older Hound's control collar slammed a spike of electricity through the pain receptors of her brain. With a hissing gasp, the older Hound fell to her knees. Her hands scrabbled frantically at the remnants of the carpet as she fought to control herself. She didn't dare scream. If she did, Rachel might be damn fool enough to come running back to the house. And once the PGs saw young, pretty, Rachel...
"You say the other one is scavenging?" asked the leader quietly. Through the haze of pain, the older Hound noted that he wasn't a shouter or screamer. That was bad. Very bad. The screamers worked off their hate with a lot of yelling. The quiet ones were slower, more deliberate, and far more dangerous.
"L... Looking for f... food," gasped the older Hound, still on her hands and knees and shivering from the after-effect of the neural attack. "Hungry. We're hungry. Do anything for food."
The older Hound knew where this session with the PGs was going. She could see it in the way they were looking at her.
The leader shrugged and kicked the older Hound onto her back.
After a couple of hours, the PGs called for Rachel to come in. She couldn't do anything but obey. The control collars that all Hounds wore made it impossible to run or fight.
Rachel walked through the backdoor of the house, trying not to look frightened. In a corner of the living room, the older Hound was sitting on the floor. Her face was marked up, but she was healing with the same speed that Rachel had seen the day before. The older Hound was expressionlessly pulling her worn boots back onto her feet. She didn't look at Rachel as the younger Hound entered the room.
One of the PG infantrymen glanced at Rachel and then shook his head in disgust and threw his cigarette out the window.
"Shit. Look at this. We should have waited," he complained.
Rachel felt something inside of herself suddenly go hollow.
The officer looked in Rachel's direction and shrugged.
"Playtime's over," he said coldly. "Mount up. We're out of time and we've got to get back to base."
Rachel risked a glance at the other Hound. She still wouldn't look back at Rachel.
"Get out," growled the officer to the room in general. One of the PG grunts grabbed Rachel by the arm and they left the house.
The older Hound climbed to her feet. The officer was still standing in the middle of the room, looking at her with a faintly amused expression on his face. Stepping over to her, he ran a finger along the line of her jaw. It was an oddly gentle gesture.
"You tricked us, didn't you?" he asked with a slight smile.
"I'm don't know what you mean, sir," the older Hound answered in an emotionless voice.
The officer shrugged it off. "Never mind. It doesn't matter."
They left the house together. The others were already aboard the helicopter and the rotors were beginning to turn.
The two Hounds were chained by their collars to a lock-bar in the helicopter's cargo compartment. One of the PGs tossed them a pair of ration packs.
"Already paid for," he said with a grin.
After they ate, Rachel and the older Hound sat next to one another in the darkness of the cargo compartment, holding hands and saying nothing.
The PGs dropped them off at the Sentinel base just outside of Kansas City. A harried-looking Sergeant was waiting to escort them to the holding pen. Punching the keys of a hand computer, he frowned at the results.
"Shit. You both lost your handlers, huh?" he asked distractedly, not really expecting an answer.
"Yes, Sergeant," responded Rachel.
"Dammit, more fucking paperwork. Okay, number forty-six, what's your name?"
"Rachel, Sergeant."
"Right. And how about you, number twenty-three?"
The older Hound shook her head and started to say something.
Rachel put her hand on the older Hound's shoulder. "Her name is Laura, Sergeant," Rachel said quietly.
The older Hound looked curiously at Rachel for a moment and then shrugged and nodded her head.
"Yes. My name is Laura, Sergeant."
The Sergeant keyed the information into the computer.
"Okay, you two pieces of gene-trash get your asses into the kennel," he ordered without looking up at them. "Report to the NCOIC, grab some chow, and then get some sleep. Tomorrow's going to be a busy day."
Later that evening, Laura and Rachel were assigned new handlers. The next morning, Laura was sent to the Central American sector and Rachel went back to New York City.
Rachel never saw Laura again. Or at least, she never saw that Laura again.
Rachel:
I walked into the kitchen. Laura was rummaging through the refrigerator - which made me smile. Her ability to eat three meals and a half-dozen snacks a day and never gain even an ounce of weight is the cause of both amused awe and exasperated envy among the other women in the mansion.
She turned away from the refrigerator. With an apple in each hand, Laura took a huge bite from one of them. As she chewed, Laura seemed to examine me closely.
Expressionlessly, Laura flicked her left wrist and sent her untouched apple in a perfect arc towards me.
After grabbing the apple out of the air, I sat down at the kitchen table and took a bite.
After a moment's hesitation, Laura sat down next to me.
Laura is one of those people who eats the entire apple - core, seeds, and all. Then she took my leftover core and ate it as well.
"Why are you always watching me?" she asked quietly.
"You remind me of someone I once knew," I answered.
Hey, it was true.
"Who was she?"
"That would be hard to explain."
She looked puzzled, but didn't argue.
"You were friends?" she asked.
"Sort of. We didn't know one another for very long. She was one of the best people I ever met."
"It... feels strange. You watching me all the time."
"I'm sorry."
"How long are you going to keep watch on me?"
"Forever," I choked out. And then Laura saw the tears in my eyes and fell silent.
Author's note: The character of Rachel Grey was introduced to us in Uncanny X-Men #141. In her first appearance, she was a 'Hound' - a mutant from the "Days of Future Past" who had been 'tamed' and turned into a slave-soldier.
When you think about it, the parallels between Rachel's origin and that of X-23 are actually rather striking.
I keep messing with this particular story. If you've read it before and seem to remember the story being somewhat different, you're probably right. This is something like the third time I've posted this story (on three separate sites) and there are a fair number of differences every time I repost it. Part of the problem is that the "Days of Future Past" is a really ugly background in which to tell a story and I keep fiddling with making the story more harsh or less harsh. The other is that Laura's character has evolved a fair amount since I first wrote "Hounds".