Hey guys! I really like where this story is heading, and I want to thank everyone who gave great feedback from the prologue. Sorry it's so late at night. Enjoy!
Disclaimer: I don't own X-Men, in any way or form, I only own my own characters and tweaks to the plot line.
Young and frightened, Kate could only think of ways to get out. To leave.
She hurdled over a log, then her bare feet collided against the hard, gravelly surface, as she continued forth on her painful journey. She could hear faintly the sirens blaring in the distance, the howling of the hounds, and the angry thoughts of the guards. They were on a hunt. For her. An experiment couldn't get away. If they exposed themselves to the world, their business would be shut down.
She leapt over a large rock, and landed on a twig, as it snapped under her foot. The hounds began to bark crazily the moment they heard the sound. She was doomed. Done. They were going to get her, and drag her back to the institute. She remembered exactly what they did to experiments who tried to escape, and she did not want that.
She had to give this sprinting marathon her all. It was either freedom or to be 'put to sleep' in the guards words. It made her stomach clench thinking of that phrase.
Kate was lucky to have night vision. The power came to her when she discovered she could disappear into the shadows. It made things a whole lot easier. So when it was past twilight, and she was running for her life, this power sure did come in hand.
Her head snapped back to see the guards, who were gaining onto her. When she picked up the speed, she turned around, there not even ten feet away was a cliff. This was it. She was trapped. She scanned her surroundings, but nothing was in sight.
Kate's heart race, as she heard the howls of the hounds, the grunting of the guards, and her last moments of being free were over. She closed her eyes, and a small tear trickled down her cheek. Then they were presented before her. Their flash lights searched around for her, and she tried hard to hide in the darkness, but they had found her.
"There's the little kitten." One of the men sneered, and approached her.
"No, no!" She screamed.
"Please don't-" She startled awake, thrashing her arms around, and a light, delicate hand settled on her arm.
"Katelyn, it's okay. You're safe now. We're here." She heard Charles's faint voice say, and the brunette was wide awake now, as she perked up her head, her glassy blue eyes opening, as they gazed out of the car window. They were here. And by here, they mean a CIA government issued facility made for mutants like her, Division X is what Charles called it. So she finally belonged somewhere where people didn't shun her, and doctors didn't harass her with needles and constant tests.
"How long have I been asleep?" She asked, seeing that it was still dark outside.
"Not long, less than thirty minutes." Charles smiled lightly at her.
"How did we get here so fast?" She asked with her brows furrowed. Charles glanced at Erik, and the two chuckled. What was so funny?
She exited the car, and slung her knap sack over her shoulder, as the three escorted themselves to the front.
"Ah, Charles, Erik, welcome back. I see you have brought one more recruit." A large, more plump man greeted them, as he sported a black suit, wore square glasses, and had jet black hair. He extended his hand out to her. "I'm Agent Platt, and I promise you I'm on your side."
"Kate Lancer, and by that I hope you mean you support us, because you aren't a mutant." Platt raised his eyebrows, glancing to Charles. "I'm a telepath too Mr. Platt." The man smiled, his cheeks scrunching up.
"Maybe we can use her for the Cerebro." Platt suggested, and Charles shook his head. "Well, anyway, let's introduce you to your new partners, Kate. You'll be with them for a…long while, so might as well get acquainted." Then the suited man twisted around, and lead the three around the facility, as he pointed out what different rooms were, and history facts about the place.
How could it have history? They must have just built it.
Charles snickered behind her, and she knew he couldn't help but have read her mind. She shot him a look saying into his mind 'Do it again, and you'll regret it'.
They rounded a corner, and headed towards double doors, where she could hear talking. "And here are the others." Platt said, gesturing towards the doors. She hesitated, but entered into the room, followed by the three other men.
"Everyone, I would like you to meet your new recruit -" Charles began loudly, his hands politely tucked behind his back, but he was cut off by another voice.
"Runt?" A deep voice said, and Kate knew that voice immediately. Her blue eyes shot towards where it came from, and found the owner. None other than Alex Summers sat on a chair, his blue eyes wide as he glared at her.
"Summers?" She hissed, watching him. His blonde hair had grown out longer, instead of being completely shaved. His haunting, torturing blue eyes hardened looking at her. His mouth was in a tight line. So many memories flooded her mind. "You! What are you doing here?"
"I should be asking you that-" He was retaliating, but she huffed, throwing up her arms, watching him bewildered.
"Me? You should be asking me?! You knew I was different! You are the one who should be talking!" She now stormed towards him, as she raised a fist, yelling at him with her telepathy, using profanity that the others could not hear, thankfully. Well, except Charles.
'Kate, calm your mind.' Charles disobeyed her previous threat, and got into her mind. 'Please, calm your mind.' He could feel her tension, could see her horrible past with Alex, and knew that she must get past this in order to be able to work together with him.
Her muscles relaxed, and her jaw unclenched, as she bored deep into Alex's eyes, her flickering flame of hatred for him slightly dying down. "Thank you." Charles finally spoke, and everyone in the room observed the whole scene with confused expressions. One of them, a redheaded boy, cleared his throat, and Alex finally broke off from the staring contest between he and Kate.
"Well, I think we should leave you all to get to know each other." Erik said awkwardly, and the three men exited the room.
Kate sat across the room from Alex, as she placed herself in a chair between the two couches. Her back to the window.
"Well, uh…hi, I'm Raven, that's Angel," The blonde began to introduce herself to Kate, then gestured towards the girl on Kate's right. "And this is Hank," Raven pointed toward at the boy wearing glasses sitting beside her.
"I'm Darwin." The dark skinned man inserted, raising his hand. Kate smiled lightly at him.
"And you may call me Sean." The redheaded boy bowed towards her, and she chuckled.
Alex sat still in his chair, eyeing the brunette across the room. He couldn't believe she was here. The little runt was in the same room as him. And just looking at her set his teeth on edge. She was the reason he was held in jail, she was the reason he hid from the world for so long. She made him lose himself. Lose security about himself.
"We were just talking about how we're government agents now, and that we need code-names." Raven returned, and Kate landed his blue eyes upon the girl. "I want to be called Mystique." She looked smug about it.
"Dang, I wanted to be called Mystique." Sean clicked the ending of the name.
"Tough, I called it, and besides," Suddenly Raven turned into a clone of Sean. "I'm way more mysterious than you." Sean 2 said. Everyone gasped, and when she morphed back they clapped. "What about you Darwin?"
"Well, Darwin is already a nickname. Adapt to survive and all. Check it out," he rose from his seat, and strutted towards the fish tank as he wiggled his eyebrows at them, making sure they all were watching, then he dunked his face into the tank, and soon enough gills scaled onto his neck. He smiled to them, and they all cheered and clap. Darwin bowed to them laughing softly. "What about you?" He pointed to Sean.
"I want to be called…Banshee." He hesitated, thinking of a code name.
Hank straightened up. "What do you want to be named after a wailing spirit?" Everyone's attention was divided to Sean.
"You might want to cover your ears." Sean suggested, as he stood up. Everyone glanced at each other with a question in their gaze, before slowly raising hands over their ears. Sean took in a deep breath, and leveled himself to the row of glasses filled with pop. He glanced around, then let out a piercing whistle, missing the glasses and instead hitting the window behind Kate. She fell forward and away from the glass as it shattered behind her. Everyone chuckled in surprise.
"How about you Angel?" Kate asked politely to the girl beside her.
"Well," She began to get up, "my uh, stage name, is Angel," then she removed her jacket off of her shoulders, and Sean whistled to her. "Kind of fits." She twisted around to show everyone her colorful dragonfly wings. Kate gaped at them, along with Raven.
"You can fly?!" Raven asked with envy.
"Uh-huh, and uh," She turned around to face the window that shattered, and spat out a small flaming ball, as it flew towards the golden statue outside, and when it struck the head of the statue, it boiled the surface of it like acid. Kate began to feel her powers were kind of weak compared to the others.
"Your turn." Angel pointed towards Hank, and he suddenly hung his head, gazing at his feet. Alex started laughing.
"How about Big Foot?" Kate didn't want to read Hank's mind, but she knew it had something to do with his feet. Maybe he had monkey feet, with opposable thumbs.
Raven gave Alex a harsh glance, then cocked an eyebrow. "Well, you know what they say about big feet…and yours are kind of small." Kate snorted, and Alex glared at her, as the others chuckled. Raven glimpsed to Hank, and blushed softly.
"Okay, so Kate, let's see what you can do." Sean asked her, eyeing her. She rolled her blue eyes at him but smiled. Okay, here we go. She thought.
'Well first, I guess you get to find out I'm a telepath.' She thought to them all, and they began to cover their ears, listening to her voice, accepting it. They all smiled and laughed. "And I can also…" She trailed, as she stood up from where she was, and walked over behind one of the couches. The moment her feet touched the shadow it was casting, she disappeared from their eyes.
"Amazing!" Raven said, as everyone clapped and gaped.
"That's not all." Alex grumbled, leaning back in his seat, his arms crossed over his chest, narrowing his eyes upon Kate.
"What else could you possibly do?" Angel asked, a bit of jealously in her tone, since the brunette has so many powers.
"It's nothing really." Kate insisted.
"Supernatural senses and agility." Alex began, "Her senses are enhanced two times more than an average person, as well as speed and strength." Alex informed them, as if he was reading off her résumé. He stared her down as she plopped down back into her seat. He couldn't stand watching her, yet he couldn't keep his eyes off of her.
"I think you should be called Shadow!" Sean said excitedly.
"No, that's too simple. Anyone could chose Shadow." Raven returned.
A name popped into her mind, and Kate grinned. "How about Opaque? You know, another word for a solid color." Everyone began nodding with wide smiles, it fit, and sounded great.
Opaque.
She could get use to that.
OoOoOo
Kate was watching the others as they goofed around. She sat patiently on the couch, sipping from her bottle of pop, taking mental notes of everyone in the room. She smiled at Raven's ridiculous dancing, the swaying Angel was making while flying, and Hank mouthing along with the music as he dangled from one of the hanging lamps. She glanced behind her to observe the boys rough housing. Alex and Sean beating chairs and scrap pieces of things in the room against Darwin, as he adapted with a hard armadillo-like armor over his torso. Sean caught her eye, and raised his eyebrows to see if she wanted to give a go with beating something against Darwin. She chuckled and shook her head.
A slight tingle triggered in the back of her mind, but she ignored it. Laughing as Darwin kept yelling for the boys to hit harder, and that he couldn't feel a thing.
Kate began to hear hollow, faint voices, and decided against tuning in. Probably some agents. She really hated listening to their boring conversations.
"…they're an exceptional bunch-" Now Kate could hear Charles voice. She put up her mental block, and hid quickly into the shadows as Charles, Erik, and a Moira MacTaggert, who she learned very much from at that moment, approached the shattered window, and the party of teens.
"WHAT ARE YOU DOING?" The C.I.A. agent practically screamed to them, and all the kids immediately stopped. Alex and Sean dropping their things, Raven stepping off the couch, Hank dropping to the ground, and Angel landing softly on the ground. Kate tried to creep away in the shadows, but there wasn't enough to get her out the window. "Who destroyed the statue?" Moira hastily asked pointing towards the sliced in half statue still on fire from Alex's surprising mutation that he had, of plasmid energy rings.
"It was Alex." Hank quickly responded, and Alex shot him a look.
"No, Havok." Raven interrupted with a wild grin, "We have to call him Havok. And we were thinking," she pointed to Charles, "you should be Professor X," then to Erik, "and you should be Magneto."
Erik eyed her. "Exceptional." He merely said, then stalked off. Only Kate understood what he said, and grief flooded over her.
Moira just search every single one of their eyes, then shook her head slightly and stalked off.
Charles lingered, watching his sister, disappointment washed over him. "I expect more of you." And then he took turn and left them.
They all glanced at each other, feeling guilty and awful, the same feeling a child get's after being yelled at by their parent. They all sat down, staring down at their feet, calming their emotions. Finally Sean spoke up.
"Where's Kate?"
OoOoOo
Kate lugged her knapsack over her shoulder, and pushed open the front door of the facility, as she stalked off, thinking of ways to get back to Kingsley. She felt deep down in her gut that this just wasn't the right place for her, and that she was only going dig herself a deeper grave. If any of her contact information could be released to other government issued corporations, Kate would immediately be hunted down and drug back to the institute, and that was the last place on her mind to go.
She jingled the money in her coat pocket, enough to get her as far as Charlottesville. Now to find a bus station.
"So you want to leave?" She heard a voice speak from behind her. She twisted around to find, of all people, Alex watching her, leaning up against one of the pillars holding up the overhang, his hands tucked in his pockets.
"I'd be better off without this group." She admitted.
He took a step forward. "Why? You think something might start between us? Might turn in someone else into custody?" He sneered.
She sighed. "I don't belong here. I mean, I'm Runt after all. Who needs a backstabber here."
"We could use you, and protect you here." Alex offered. He was…being sincere. He never was like that before when they were in the gang. He use to hit her, to scream at her, and to treat her like she had no feelings.
She only laughed humorlessly. "No, you don't need me. Listen, I've dug myself a deep grave, I've been in terrible situations, and to belong in a governmental environment will only get me into deeper shit. I've got loose ends that cannot be tied up, and being here will only do the opposite."
"I get where you're coming from-" Alex began, moving towards her, but she jerked back, looking furious.
"No! You don't understand. Okay? You've never had to go through the pain, the torture that I did. You never had to have your whole life taken from you, and pushed straight into hell." She yelled back at him.
He exhaled. "Maybe I don't understand." He hesitated. "Fine. I'm not going to stop you. But I want to let you know that I don't want you to leave. And neither does anyone else. This is a place where what you truly are is accepted." He bored into her blue eyes. "No more running away, Kate."
"It's my only choice." She returned sorrowfully. He nodded slowly, taking in her appearance, then turned his back on her and stalked back to the facility.
"Just think about it." He said finally. Then he was gone.
OoOoOo
"You better run, Runt!" His voice was loud and haunting. It coursed through her mind every night, the sound keeping her awake. It was awful to hear, and it made her blood run cold. It incessantly repeated in her mind, and she could never get it to stop. His tone, his towering figure, the crushing feel of his fist, all of it flooding back into her mind. She couldn't get it out. She didn't want to. It was a reminder of the wronging she did, the hell he put her through. It was what gave her the burning hatred she needed, and that's how she liked it.
Kate will never forget the night when she freed herself from the hell Alex Summers put her through, and threw him into.
And that is Chapter 1.
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