Thank you to everyone who read and reviewed Chapter 1. This may be a slightly slow process, but I intend to complete this story fully so please keep checking for updates as they will be coming. Please review and all input is welcome.
As always, I still own nothing but I appreciate the opportunity to let my imagination run.
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Rogue spotted the first old mine out of the corner of her eye. Swooping down, she reached in just a second in a whirl of dust and wind. Dusting herself off habitually, she peered into the darkened cavern and wondered just how deep the thing went. She pulled her flashlight from her belt and scanned the mine. It looked blocked about forty feet in and as she progressed, she realized the accuracy in her first assessment. Sighing, she left the cavern and took to the skies again. It wasn't long before another dark hole in the hills caught her eyes. One after another, they turned out to be empty and caved in. Each was old and abandoned and she was surprised at just how many there were spread out over the desert, leaving the marks of another time and a very different American lifestyle.
Landing outside the good sized cavern, she lit her flashlight and noticed the tunnel went further than her beam. She followed the path of dirt and old wood beams until the air grew musty and stale. Turning to see her exit, all she could see was a dot of sunlight. The darkness pulled at her and in her anxiety, she flipped off the flashlight and closed her eyes, breathing deeply.
Her parents had been there to greet her as she stepped off the train that evening. She'd been tired and travel wary but excited to see them smiling. The little voice in the back of her head had been warning her of impending anguish all day. She hadn't been able to tell if it was Magneto or Logan, or maybe they'd both been grumbling. It didn't matter anymore at that point. She was home after two years and a newly achieved high school diploma. After the greetings and welcome homes, she had returned to the house she grew up in. The people she lived with were different than she had remembered them. Changed, aged, a bit more cynical and reproaching perhaps. She could not put her finger on it but she kept her emotional distance all the same.
They didn't understand her closed off nature. They assumed everything would go back to the way it had been. After just a few days, it was obvious that things in that house would never be the same. She still wore her gloves on occasion, more out of habit than any concern really. Marie trusted the cure and trusted that she would be able to return to a normal human life. Even as she thought that, enrolled in the local community college and attempted to just be Marie again, she looked at the world so differently now.
As her father would watch documentaries of wars he had not been alive for, Marie would scoff at certain comments and 'facts'. Her father would turn to her and ask her if she was alright. She would simply shake her head with a heavy sadness. "Their reenactment right there…the General would never leave so many troops unattended." He would cock his head and tell her that these were experts, historians, people who had researched the whole war, every event and detail. These were facts, the way things really happened. She should listen and pay attention to learn.
The first time they had come to such an impasse, she felt a tingling all over her body like her skin was beginning to crawl. She pulled her uncovered hands away from the chair arms and tightly into her lap. Suddenly, she was speaking and it was her voice and her lips moving, but the words were all Magneto's, rather more so they were the words of Eric Lensherr. Her father's eyes grew wide and his voice weak as he spoke her name questioningly. Before she knew it, Marie had stood and stalked out of the room, grunting under her breath that her father was an indescribably dense hypocritical man.
The next day, her father had hardly spoken to her and her mother had attempted to ask her about the incident but Marie had only confused and frightened her as she gave a feeble and watered down explanation of her situation and mindset. Marie had tried to go about the next few days like normal, but the people in her mind had become part of her and every so often, she would find herself pulling on their memories and opinions. She had not realized how integrated they had become and how much it had changed her. Could she still be Marie in Mississippi? She wondered if perhaps Logan had been right in warning her. However, at the end of the week, her family had seemed back to normal and she let her guard down.
That had been her first mistake. She began trusting her family and ignoring her instincts more fully. A few days into being comfortable at home, she'd begun feeling her skin tingling again, more constantly now. The news told of cured mutants' powers returning. It was all much more quickly than had been expected, even by the scientific mutant community. Her mother switched channels when these stories came on and her father left the room. Marie went for a walk without her gloves on in the summer Mississippi heat.
When she returned, her mother greeted the gloveless Marie with a hug. Confused, Marie held her hand and smiled. She put her newly purchased school books down and began to sit with her mom as her skin began tingling again. As she tried to pull her hands out of her mother's grasp, the pull began and her mother's shrieks filled the room. As she passed out on the floor, Marie's mind went haywire as it tried to take in her mother's thoughts. Just as she fell to the floor beside her mother, it clicked in her mind. Her mother's sad distant look, the black van that had recently been in their neighborhood, her father's hushed phone calls. It had been expected that her powers would return and the plan had already been set into motion. Only…only there was more to it than they had realized. Being naïve and human in the situation, her parents had not realized the full extent of the situation. Even if they had, Rogue doubted they would have cared.
Rogue drew in a deep breathe and flicked back on her flashlight again. That had been the day she began to truly be Rogue; the day that innocent Marie had begun to fade away. Now Rogue drew herself from dark memories to follow the yellow light of her flashlight down the rest of the cold tunnel. She paused, wondering when the temperature had changed so drastically inside this stone mine. Noticing a drop a few feet in front of her, she pointed the beam of sickly light down the shaft. Rogue lifted off the ground and slowly started drifting down the vertical tunnel. As she continued, the air around her started to become less stale and a vague wind stirred upward from below her. Her light still reached lamely into the dark, hitting nothing to light up. She slowed her progress, uneasiness hit her and she knew her increased sensitive instincts were warning her.
As the dot of green light came into view, she quickly flicked off her light and stopped her airborne descent. As nothing else happened for a few minutes, she continued slowly flying down the shaft, the dot turning into a large fuzzy green aura ahead of her. As she neared the light, she saw a crisscross pattern of green lasers diagonally marking the rest of the way down the tunnel. She could see at the end of the tunnel, a round porthole with a steering wheel looking circular lock. She reached into her belt and pulled out a thin computer with a camera lens sleekly integrated into the side. Taking quick snapshots of the lock and its strange key hole, she made sure to track the angles and amounts of laser beams stretching across in front of her. Hopefully, their computers back at the mansion would be able to work out the pattern and perhaps the lock's key as well. She stretched upwards and gladly made her ascent back to the main tunnel.
As she moved upward, she noticed that the walls were coated in green as well. Had she really been so caught up in memories that she had not seen these tiny lasers on the way down? If anything touched these walls, whoever maintained the lasers would know about it immediately she imagined. She slowed her ascent then in case the air movement could trigger the alarms as well. It would indeed make it impossible for anyone to climb down the shaft, though her flight had made it possible for her safe descent. Anyone else may not have been so lucky as to get out undetected.
As she reached the main tunnel, she flipped her flashlight back on and pressed her earpiece. "Cyclops, this is Rogue, can you hear me?" She knew she was deep inside the mountain, but she wasn't sure how deep or how far their Comm. Systems would reach.
After a faint crackling, she heard their leader's voice ring clear. "Rogue, you're a little faint but I hear you. Report."
She smiled at his quick tone and oh so Scott manner. "I'm marking the tunnel I'm in on my comp. I think I've found something but the tunnel is locked and alarmed. I'm sending the information to the Blackbird's systems now. Everything else has been a dud, this is my last run here but I think it's what we've been looking for."
She could almost see Scott's inhalation at her words and when he responded, she understood the urgency and tension in his voice. "Good work Rogue. I'm calling back the rest of the team. It appears Shadowcat and Nightcrawler also found an entrance not far from your location. Their information seems to match yours so far. Return to the Blackbird and we will regroup at headquarters."
"Understood. And Cyc…"
"Yeah Rogue?" Her leader questioned with a tint of concern in his business voice.
"I think White Queen would be helpful on this. My senses were going crazy back there and maybe she can pull something from those and see what I'm missing. There's something down there and it makes me nervous." Her voice was firm but they both understood her fears. They were the fears they all shared now as their seemingly safe and calm world was more quickly turning from hectic to dangerous with each passing day.
"Agreed. Let's get out of here and see what we can come up with."
As Cyclops' message rang in her ears, she made her way through the dark tunnel and squinted into the glaring sunlight as she reached the fresh desert air. Her senses hadn't been on a fluke down there. Someone had put out a vibe of danger to warn them off. She could feel it deep inside and it was so familiar. As she whipped through the sand blasted wind and heat to make her way back to the now far away Blackbird, her fears seemed confirmed that the Wolverine was not the only mutant she needed to get safely away from that hidden facility. There was another who needed her help, whether he wanted it or not.