Chapter 7
By Lady Macbeth
"Oh, Fuck." Was all Yukio could mutter, her head was aching so badly. In a second it shot into her mind; "Where's the head piece?" she tried to raise her hand to look for it, only to find both her hands were bound behind her back. Handcuffs. Opening her eyes she tried to adjust them to the darkness. Was she dizzy or were her surroundings moving?
Trying to sit up straight with both her hands and ankles bound with solid metal cuffs, she could only see she was locked inside a box of sorts, with a long horizontal narrow opening too high to reach even if her limbs were free. And the whole damn thing was moving. A truck.
"Oh, fuck indeed." She murmured to herself.
Now it was coming back to her…they had found her, the security guards, and Grant had Storm, and Gambit…Oh, shit, Gambit. What happened to Gambit? Now they were driving her somewhere, in the back of a truck all packed up and locked like cargo. She didn't know where they were going, but one thing was sure, Grant wanted Storm and just Storm…as for her and Gambit, well, three was definitely a crowd in this case. Somewhere the Cajun was probably in a similar if not worst situation.
"Ok…Thieves number one rule...be cool no matter what…. They'll have to stop this shit eventually and do something with me. So let's think while we have the time, Yukio."
She lay on her side, in a more comfortable position and twisted her wrists in a way she could feel the kind of handcuffs she had on. Grant probably knew she wasn't a mutant; no special cuffs, just the regular police kind.
If only they had bound her hands in front of her body, she could reach up for a hairpin and break free…well, what the hell, the situation required just a little more thought to be put into it, that was all. Easy things are boring anyway.
A trap. It was all a big trap. Grant had them wrapped around his finger all the godamn time. Gambit involuntarily took a step back, still holding his gaze up, sternly. The vault closed loudly behind his back locking him in that boxy metal room. A few steps ahead inside it's crystal cradle laying regally on its burgundy velvet bed was the cross. The famed Cross of Constantine, glory and ruin of uncountable generations of ambitious men. It was exactly how he imagined it, all golden, so clear and well polished one could mistake it for light in solid state instead of cold metal, with the blood-red ruby in the center and the seven pearls all black like death's cloak. Interestingly, now that it was in front of him, it was the thing that last interested the Cajun. Instead his eyes fixed what was behind it, a pair of eyes as dark as the cross's pearls, but deprived of the same lively brilliance.
"Well, it seems we just keep bumping into each other…" The Louisianan grimaced, utterly displeased.
Nathaniel Essex, better known as Mister Sinister, simply took a few steps until he was a mere meter away from the Cajun thief, and stood. Just…stood, quietly. Gambit clenched his jaw.
"You were in it with Grant…" He said, a statement rather than a question. Used to think fast under dangerous and seemingly inescapable conditions, Remy found himself frozen, his line of thinking turned into a complete mess, where only one thing was clear: all three of them, Yukio, Stormy and himself, were undeniably screwed. And it was his entire fault.
Sinister lips curled in somewhat of a bizarre grin.
"I guess one can say Mr. Grant and me have some…concomitant interests in this whole matter…."
"You're one deranged son of a bitch, you know that? So what's the deal now? He gets Stormy and you get me? Is that so?" Remy snorted.
"I suppose we have an awful lot to talk about, lad."
"No we don't. I had a deal with you once and my debt is more than paid for. I have nothing to do with you anymore."
"That's precisely where you are wrong…son."
It hurt her ankles like hell, but she had managed to kick off her shoes. The ronin trashed her head onto the truck's floor to get the hairpins a little loose, thanking god she didn't put socks on with those shoes and had let her hair grow out enough to actually wear hairpins. She then curled her body in a way her feet touched the back of her head, managing to pull a hairpin off with her toes. Who said the ability of putting your feet over your head doesn't have any non-recreative utility? Now she just had to sit up and pick up the hairpin. Breaking out of a pair of handcuffs with a hairpin without actually looking at it was basic thief old school 101. Once that was done, it was a matter of seconds to free her feet.
Getting up, ever so slowly as to not get attention, she half crawled over to the truck's locked doors. Her eyes, now accustomed to the darkness, cut here and there by beams of light flashing through the opening in the back of the truck, soon found that the doors were actually closed from the outside, leaving her no choice but to wait for somebody to open it. So she crouched and waited.
It was impossible to know exactly how long it took before the truck slowed down and eventually stopped. She felt the slight shaking of the vehicle, probably as the driver got down. Soon she could hear the sound of voices outside. Yukio remained crouched; her ears open to every sound even the slightest, her breath almost non-existent and her muscles still and stiff as blocks of rock. She was no longer Yukio, but a shadow, a quiet, undisturbable, undetectable shadow.
"Cosa facciamo con lei ?"A male voice asked outside.
"Grant ha ordinato di disfarsi di lei. E inconsciente, un sparo alla testa, l´affondamo nel lago con un fardello, pronto sta…" A second one answered
"Bene. Andiamo allora.."
The lock was undone. They assumed she was unconscious and handcuffed, so just one of the three men came in to drag her out. Why do men just keep underestimating women? They should know better. Before the man could even put his second foot into the truck, she had already pulled him in, snapped his arm and knocked in unconscious. In seconds…ever so silently. The other two were a just few steps ahead, but never noticed anything.
"Maurizio? Cosa fai? Adiamo, presto!" One of them asked, when the first man failed to get out.
He moved forward to see what was going on, just to have the full weight of the 6 feet tall muscular Maurizio thrown over him. The third one reached for his gun, never anticipating that Yukio had got a hold of Maurizio's gun, which he would probably regret if he had the time to think about before being hit by a single shot to the chest. Yukio got out of the truck just as the second man managed to get up from under Maurizio's weight and went for her with no plan, besides shooting her dead. Yukio didn't find any difficulty on kicking the .38 from his hand and the teeth out of his mouth. Before he could get up once again, yet another blow came, and everything went dark.
Finding the key still on the ignition, Yukio took off with the truck, trying to come up with the better plan she could think off not knowing what was really going on, where her two associates were or her odds of helping them out. She was now alone and walking in the dark, she mused trying to recognize her surroundings as she drove through the night in the middle of somewhere in the Italian countryside. Which frankly, only made things more interesting.
Finally coming back to her senses, Ororo looked around in desperation, ignoring the dizziness. She found herself in what looked all and all like the chamber of a XVI century countess. The bed was just about the real life version of the bed in "The princess and the pea", all covered with luscious black covers, just as the velvet upholstering of the love seat and armchair, the walls were covered in panels of creamy magnolia colored voile fabric topped with arches of black velvet and dark golden brocade, and the floor under her feet as she got up from the bed was of a rich chocolate mahogany just as the furniture. Even if luxurious the room was dry, and cold. There wasn't a sign of it ever being inhabited.
There were no books, nobody's personal objects, no storage for clothing or anything of the likes, no pictures or paintings, nothing to give a personality to whoever had used it, if anybody ever had.
Immediately as it was her habitude when in strange surroundings, Ororo looked for doors and windows. But there was none. The fabric panels covered every bit of the walls and whenever she pulled the fabric aside she was confronted with polished metal walls. The whole room was a box, like a little room made by a child into a shoebox to house a doll. Ororo immediately felt her heartbeats increasing, and her breath becoming short. A wave of cold washed over her and in seconds a panic attack was installed. She started feeling like she was falling from hundreds of feet into the vacuum, her insides feeling like a void and her thoughts getting more and more confused. She curled up in fetal position and closed her eyes fighting for air. When she finally mastered the energy to say something it came out almost like a childish sob:
"Let me out! Peter! Let me out!"
"You're finally awake. Did you get a good rest, cara mia?" Grant's voice reached her ears through the distortion of electric sound devices, probably installed on the walls.
"Get me out of here!"
"Why? Don't tell me you're not pleased with the accommodations?"
"You know I can't be in here! Let me out." She was crying now.
"Ok. I will. If you just ask me properly."
"Stop it! Get me out! GET ME THE FUCK OUT!"
"You'll have to do better than this, bella."
She became quiet. He didn't insist. Hiding her face on her bent knees she started to cry softly, her eyes firmly shut, trying to imagine herself somewhere else. It worked for about five minutes or so. Until she lost every bit of concentration and started gasping for air again. She was already hyperventilating and the irrational fear of going out of oxygen was becoming unbearable. For a second she laughed at herself, she wouldn't go out of oxygen, Peter probably had put ventilation somewhere, and she couldn't see it that was all. What if he hadn't? She ran her eyes around the room, it didn't look like it had any ventilation, she thought, desperately. She got up, wiping the tears from her eyes and started looking, like her life depended on it. Even upon tearing the fabrics all she could find was polished metal, there wasn't as much as a flaw on the walls. She sat up on an armchair trying to collect herself taking quick, little breaths. Closing her eyes again she started twisting the rags of the ripped fabrics between her fingers hopping it would distract her.
"Peter…." She called, in hopes that the slightest human contact, even if just hearing the voice of her captor would calm her down. He didn't answered. She wondered if he heard her. No. She knew he was hearing her, maybe watching her. "Peter." She persisted, "Saint…"
One hour. The longest time she had ever endured. By the end of it, Ororo was almost knocked unconscious once again, her head hurting from all the crying, her breath shallow, suffocating, her body limp on the floor, her mind incapable of one single, simple thought
"Please let me out…please," She murmured with the last bit of energy she had, sobbing at the humiliation.
She heard a hissing sound, followed by steps:
"Now that's much better."
She looked up to see him hovering over her. "You are crazy."
Grant leaned over her and cradled her in his arms.
"There, there…" he hushed her. Ororo wished she could have pushed him away. She couldn't.
"What did you do with them?"
"Yukio is being well taken care of…As for our favorite Cajun. Well, he's having a…family meeting as we speak. Now let's take care of you. You must be exhausted, my love. Let me get you out of here."
She wanted to protest. She didn't. Instead she just let herself be carried away, as he eyelids got heavier and heavier.
(Continues…)
Notes:
-What do we do with her?
-Grant said to get rid of her…She's unconscious…one shot in the head, sink her in the lake with a weight and there you have it.
-Fine. Let's go then.
-Maurizio! What are you doing? Come on, quick!
(Continues…)
