DISCLAIMER: I do not own GI JOE, if I did Ripcord would have never been kissed by Scarlett and Baroness wouldn't have played Hard-To-Get with Destro. Also, Storm Shadow wouldn't have been dumped in the ocean. No money is being made from this so don't bother suing me, you won't get anything. I own nothing except the plot of this story and the word processor it was typed on.

SUMMERY: They say revenge is a dish best served cold. Brothers separated by a lie, a lover struggles for her man's freedom and two soldiers search for answers before it's too late.

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Cold. Deep burning cold that tore through muscle and bone, leaving a man helpless while in its grasp. Arashikage Tomio fought hard against his wounds and the arctic water trying to pull him under. Finally his head broke the surface and his stiff fingers grabbed uselessly at the smooth metal of an emergency ladder. He nearly lost his grip when something grabbed him by the arm and hoisted him easily out of the water. He dangled helplessly several inches off the floor while an mechanical voice said, "Identification. Please state your name clearly." Storm Shadow groaned at the idiocy of Destro's robotic assistants. "Unable to verify. Prepare for retinal scan." The bright green light that scanned across his eyes burned almost as much as the water had, "Confirmed, Storm Shadow status severe hypothermia. Requires medical attention immediately." The machine hoisted him up into it's arms and moved swiftly down the still burning hallway while the automated emergency systems sealed off the flooded corridors and worked to extinguish the flames.

The ninja groaned again as the android set him down on the operating table in the Doctor's lab. "Beginning emergency med program EH-6279." A needle jabbed into his arm and Storm Shadow felt the sedative begin to work almost instantly. The potent formula dragging his consciousness away faster than the arctic waters and sever injuries had managed.

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Baroness Anastasia DeCobray sat cross legged on the narrow cot in her high security prison cell, neatly braiding and unbraiding her long black hair. She hadn't slept in three days, carefully memorizing the guard rotation and the route from her cell, to the cells the JOEs were holding James and her brother in, and from there to the nearest exit. A morning escape would be their best chance, right before they moved the new shift in. It would be roughly a five minute window, provided that the entire affair went smoothly. Which she had found in her vast experience with these matters, never actually worked out. But thankfully, Ana wasn't counting on the JOEs to ensure her escape. She had quite a clever little con-artist on the payroll.

It had been almost two week since her arrest and the 'revelation' of Rex's nanite implants. Revelation bah, she'd asked him to do it. Her brother had avoided her request for a while, but Ana was tired. Tired of the memories of Conrad leaving her without a word, tired of hiding from the government that Rex was alive, tired of playing the grieving sister every fucking minute of every fucking day. She was tired of being so fucking weak. Those nanites had made her faster, stronger better than she could have ever dreamed of, even with her martial arts skill. The fact that they also removed those pesky memories, replacing them with set of false ones she herself had carefully penned out. Ana Lewis had been a pathetic, spineless weakling, sniveling after her precious boyfriend who dumped her. But Anastasia DeCobray, the Baroness was powerful, strong a confident woman who had the money and influence to be able to take over the world.

God help the poor sap who got in her way.

The Cobra Queen clicked her tongue against her teeth as she watched the shift change. Hopefully that brainless idiot Zarana would remember to do as she was told and not screw up all of her carefully laid plans. She glanced up at the clock, 1400hrs exactly, when the guard fidgeted slightly, waiting for his relief to show up. It did roughly a minute later in the form of a rather attractive blond soldier, her hair slightly mussed and she panted slightly as though out of breath.

"Sorry I'm late sir." The soldier said, snapping smartly to attention. "Got lost on the way down."

"That's alright Private." The older soldier said, donning his hat and moving away from his post across from Anastasia's cell. "Mrs. DeCobray doesn't cause any trouble, so just stand here and don't talk to her."

"Aye aye sir." The private saluted sharply and took her place across from the Baroness' cell. Once the door at the end of the hall slammed shut, the blond soldier rolled her eyes and set her AK-47 against the wall so she could stretch properly. "Damn someone should get that guy to loosen up a bit huh?" She yawned, rotating her shoulder joints carefully.

"You'd be hard pressed little girl, the good sergeant happens to be gay." Baroness replied coolly, examining her neatly manicured nails. "But something tells me that you would try anyway."

"Maybe, maybe not." The woman slumped against the wall and scuffed her booted foot against the floor. "Damn it this is not what they said I'd be doing when I signed up at the recruitment office."

Anastasia stood and walked over to the special square of perfectly smooth steel which had bee welded to the bars of her cell to serve as a mirror. Apparently marrying the Baron had merited her a few comforts even while in prison. It took a little bit of maneuvering, but she managed to grasped the folded slip of paper between her bare toes and walk back to the cot, and sit with her legs tucked under herself in one graceful movement without the camera picking up on it.

She smiled inwardly, Well Duke, it looks like that dumb trick you taught me is going to help me get the hell out of here. She pulled the thin strip of metal out of the folded paper and palmed it carefully, and twisted the slip of paper which had the access codes to James and her brother's cells typed onto it, into her long hair, taking special care not to rip it. Slight of hand was simple for someone with the amount of dexterity and skill with concealing small weapons as she did.

"You know what sweetheart," Anastasia said to the other soldier, "I'm obviously not going anywhere. How about you go ahead and find the Sergeant of yours? See if I'm wrong about him."

The soldier tapped a gloved finger against her chin thoughtfully. "Yea what the hell. I've been trying to get my sorry ass fired anyway." She picked up her rifle and set it against her shoulder and set off down the hall whistling happily to herself. "I bet he's about five minutes ahead of me so I should catch up with him pretty quick."

Baroness glanced back up at the clock. 1408Hr, two more minutes until the security systems completely shut down on this cell block for five minutes. The automated door locks and gun turrets would remain off line for another five minutes after that so she had a total of ten minutes to get six levels down, open two high security cells each with a sixteen digit numeric password, then back up nine levels, through four airtight sealed doors and then, the Sahara desert. Where hopefully, the Dreadnoks were waiting with their air lift out of this god forsaken hell hole.

Thirty seconds and counting.

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Specialist Courtney "Cover Girl" Kreiger balanced a cardboard tray holding steaming cups from the canteen between her injured arm and her chest and a paper bag held tightly between her teeth so she could ring the door buzzer to her friend's quarters. "C'mon girlf'end open th' door a'eady!" When the door opened, the tank jockey glared at Shana who had burst out laughing at her friend's appearance. Dropping the bag into her hand, Courtney huffed, "Well, see if I ever show up with breakfast and coffee's for you ever again Scarlett." She waved the bag at her fellow JOE, "Their prolly cold because it took you so long to answer the damn door."

Scarlett took the proffered bag and peeked inside, "Oh Girl you are a saint. Did you raid a bakery or something?"

"Nah," Cover Girl replied, pushing past Scarlett and setting the tray of cups on the coffee table. "Roadblock decided that he was gonna use up all the milk and eggs before they went bad. The break in last week trashed a few of the power supplies so the refrigerators aren't running as cold as the should. I'm not gonna complain though, the man bakes a mean muffin." She handed Shana one of the paper cups as the red haired woman came to sit down next to her. "Here you go fresh hazelnut coffee with 'real' cream and plenty of sugar."

"Mmm." Shana's eyes closed in bliss as she sipped the hot drink. "Roadblock is pulling out all the stops isn't he?"

"Hey, you all came back from the North Pole mission, more or less in one piece and the Secret Service released Ripcord with only one phone call, which never happens." Cover Girl too a sip of her own coffee. "Plus, it looks like once the French government will lift the ban on your team from being allowed within their national borders, well once things cool down a bit." She fished a corn muffin out of the bag and offered it to Shana. "Muffin?"

Shana laughed and reached out a hand to accept the offered pastry when the klaxxon alarm suddenly blared through through the speakers, quickly followed by Breaker yelling, "Prisoner escape from sub-level nine, high security cells, all available JOEs to stations!"

"Damn it not again." Cover Girl groaned. Scarlett was on her feet and pulling on a pair of jeans and boots before her injured friend had managed to get unsteadily to her feet. Cover Girl tossed the red head her crossbow and a box of bolts just as Scarlett tucked the bottom of her over sized shirt into her pants. "You be careful Shana, What do you think LJ'll do if she's the only girl still on the duty roster next week?"

"You too." Scarlett nodded at the other once before hesitating, her hand still on the door. "Courtney, keep an eye on him for me would you?"

"Sure thing girl, now go kick bad guy ass and make us wounded folk's proud." Cover Girl told the red head with a wide smile. "I'll keep you're boyfriend in bed even if I have to sit on him, for all the good it'll do me."

Scarlett smiled at the other woman once, before disappearing down the hallway, crossbow loaded, her blue eyes sharp for any signs of the enemy.

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"Where are they now?" Hawk demanded while Dial Tone and Mainframe worked frantically to track the escaped prisoners as one by one the security terminals shut down.

"Somewhere on level four." Mainframe said grimly, "Every time I get a camera to zero in, it shorts out. General somebody is screwing with our systems."

"Thank you Mainframe, I figured that out already." Hawk snapped angrily. "Can we slow them down?"

"No sir, all the door locks are part of the automated system. Those are down too."

Hawk growled and yanked the mic for the loud speak up to his face. "All JOEs on levels three and five converge on all level four stairwells. Cover the doors and don't let anything through." He turned his attention to the desk jockeys near him. "Shut down all the elevators that run through level four. I want those prisoners stopped here. Do not let them get topside."

Mainframe nodded as his hands flew over the keyboard, rerouting power and trying to break through the sudden flood of encryption in the JOE system. "Damn it. Who ever the hell is doing this, they're either really good or really lucky."

"I'm going to go with really good." Dial Tone replied, her normally cheerful face grim. "I've got three camera up on level four, no sound though."

"Put it on the screen Dial Tone." Hawk ordered, leaning on his cane heavily as he hobbled around the computer terminal. "I want to see who managed to break out of those cells."

Two of the video screens lit up with grainy footage of the halls and three prisoners running full tilt towards the stairwells. The footage was too bad to make out faces, but when the tallest of the three ran under one of the lights, it reflected oddly off his head. "Damn it its Destro." Hawk spat. "Two guess one who's running with him."

"This is Tunnel Rat, I'm at the top of the stairs and prepping to move in on the prisoners." The Brooklyn JOE's accented voice huffed through the bullpen's speakers. "Any JOEs in the hall get out, dropping smoke grenades and knockout gas."

"Do it Rat." Hawk said, "The hall looks clear from our camera views."

"Roger that."

The hall suddenly filled with smoke from Rat's grenades. "All JOEs move in, go go go." Hawk ordered.

Scarlett loaded her crossbow with a concussive bolt and carefully took aim through the smoke from Rat's grenades. The gas powered crossbow could shoot an arrow with as much power as any hand gun, but was far more adaptable. The bolt hit the wall behind where she guessed the prisoners to be, and on contact, rocked the hall with the force of the blast. Anything close to it would have been knocked cold instantly. "Targets down," She said into her headset mic. "HD, Roadblock with me. Let's bag and tag these snakes."

The three troopers nodded and moved into the smoke in a solid formation. "What the hell?" Roadblock's voice was angry. "Where'd those fool's go? It ain't cool yo."

"What's going on up there JOEs?" Hawks voice rang out through their earpeices.

Scarlett searched the hallway and kicked a door in frustration. "They gone General. All three of them vanished into the smoke."

"Wait what?" Breaker this time, "No that isn't possible. They have to be there somewhere."

"Well, they're not." Heavy Duty replied irritated. "Just like Scarlett said, all three of them vanished into thin air." He sniffed and wrinkled his nose. "Smells foul in here too all of a sudden. Like burned rubber or something."

Hawk sighed over the comms. "Alright JOEs, as you were. We'll need to work on figuring out what in the hell just happened here. There'll be a full briefing as soon as we have any information."

Scarlett growled and ran a hand through her hair angrily. "Damn it." She looked at the two larger JOEs. "Alright I'm heading back to my quarters, there's a hot shower and a coffee waiting for me."

Rat came from around Heavy Duty and leered at Scarlett, "Not to mention the ninja-man is gonna wonder where his girl wandered off to without him."

"Rat, shut up before I shut you up." The red haired JOE told him in exasperation. She rested her crossbow against one shoulder and cracker her neck loudly. When the infiltration specialist let out a whistle directed at her, she simpled flipped him off and slammed the door behind her.

Heavy Duty shook his head at his teammate. "Tunnel Rat, when that woman feeds you your own cajones I'm not going to do a thing to help you."

The smaller JOE just laughed out loud and clapped his friend on the shoulder. "HD, that woman won't do that, she loves my New York charm too much."

"She's still gonna feed you your balls one day little man." Roadblock told him, "And if it ain't her, Snake'll do it."

Rat shuddered, "Ulgh, I'll bet the ninja would enjoy it too."

"Hell Rat anybody would enjoy teaching you a lesson in manners." HD laughed and jabbed his thumb at the still smoke filled hallway, "Let's get this mess sorted out then, or we'll miss out on Roadblock's latest baking spree."

The chef chuckled, "I don't think so HD, I baked enough muffins and pastries to feed the whole PIT for a month."