Chapter 10

Gambit was just finishing sorting the hot, clean silverware when the click of steel on steel announced that Magneto was back from the planet's surface.

He and Piotr exchanged glances. There was no one in this part of the station that Magneto might want to talk to . . . except the two of them. And the big question was what he might want to say.

"Oh, good," he observed, upon entering the kitchen. "You're both here. That's convenient."

"Need somethin', sir?" asked Gambit. He, unlike everyone else on the team, wasn't conditioned to fear Magneto, but he did know a dangerous man when he saw one, and had the sense to give due deference.

"A word," said Magneto. "I seem to remember that when last we met, I still owed you two something like three months of unpaid wages for services rendered."

"Three and a half," said Gambit.

"Of course. Well, in our present circumstances, I don't think that money would be very useful to you, so if you'd permit, I'd like to pay you by other means."

"We don' take coupons."

This elicited the tiniest hint of a smile. Magneto turned first to Colossus, who'd been standing, silent and grim, next to his teammate. "Colossus. If I were to offer you my solemn word that hereafter, your mother, father, and younger sister would never come to any harm by me or any means of mine, would you consider yourself fairly paid?"

He saw Piotr's back and neck stiffen in surprise. If that promise was worth anything, it was worth a lot; Piotr's family were the leverage Magneto had used to control him for over two years.

"Would you keep such a promise?" Piotr demanded.

"I have flaws enough, but this is not one of them. They are safe from me forever."

Piotr nodded. "Then I would consider myself fairly paid, yes."

"Good. Then our affairs are settled."

"Yes, sir." Piotr hesitated, then added, "Thank you."

Magneto nodded. "Your teammates are in the gymnasium, on the bottom floor, if you want to know."

The message was clear: he wanted to conduct his business with Gambit alone. Piotr took the hint. After a glance at Gambit, and a nod that all was well, he left the room.

"Now, then. Gambit. What about you?"

Gambit shrugged with his good arm. "Y'got me, sir. Up until yesterday, I had fairly well anythin' I'd ever wanted."

"Yesterday was a very different day, though, wasn't it?"

"C'est certain."

Magneto looked him up and down. "I noticed this morning, when you arrived, that you were missing something I'd given you."

Gambit nodded. Involuntarily, his left hand reached for the side of his coat, where his staff had hung. "It got destroyed. In de fight."

"Indeed. Then maybe I can provide you with something useful, after all."

There was a magnetic hum, and the high moan of twisting metal. The floor underneath Gambit's feet moved. He caught his balance as the metal square on which he was now standing moved steadily but quickly upward. Below him, the hole he'd left in the floor sealed itself.

Magneto was floating, too, keeping pace with him. Above their heads, the ceiling opened up, stretching a hole in itself to let them through. They drifted into a plain, dark dormitory room with two bare twin beds, then up through that as well into another, larger dorm boasting three two-level bunks. Above that was a large, dimly lit office. The floor closed behind them, and Magneto set him down.

Like the conference room several levels below, this place had a window, looking down onto the planet below. They were keeping pace with the eastern seaboard, Gambit noticed. Below, he could see the various irregular levels of the Avalon station. They got larger as they went down.

"And de boss gets de penthouse," Gambit observed neutrally.

"This way." Magneto led him through one of the doorways that led off the office. Gambit followed him into a room full of filing cabinets. One whole wall was covered in square metal drawers, but none of them had handles. As Gambit came closer, he realized they weren't even drawers: just raised squares in the metal, with serial numbers stamped into them.

One of them slid open. Okay, drawers after all; just ones nobody else could get into without a blow torch. Out of its shadowy recesses floated a plain, gray lump of metal.

Magneto narrowed his eyes at it, concentrating. The lump rippled in response, then stretched out, twisting around itself into one long coil almost as long as Gambit's wingspan. The width evened out, forming a cylinder. A new staff.

Gambit reached out his hand. Mangeto let the gleaming weapon fall.

It was heavier than he expected, heavier than his old one had been. And harder. Gambit gave the staff an experimental twirl, flicking it from one hand to the other as it circled around his back and over his head. He brought it to a stop with one end slamming between his shoulder blades, and was almost startled by how hard it hit.

"Do you approve?"

Gambit flipped it out to where he could see it again and studied the center of the staff. In the same spot as the last one was the near-invisible button that extended and retracted the telescoping sections, depending on whether he rocked his thumb forward or back against it. But on the opposite side was another button, a new one.

He shot an enquiring glance at Magneto. "What's dis?"

"Try it."

Remy dug his finger into the button.

With a familiar, high, almost sweet metallic ring, a curved blade flipped out of each end of the staff. Each was a foot long, with a razor-sharp edge along both the inside and outside of the crescent.

Remy held the staff out with both hands. "I don'need dese. Take 'em off."

"Someday you may want them," Magneto answered.

"Take 'em off," Gambit repeated. When Magneto gave him no response, he glared, retracted the blades, and collapsed the staff. "Fine. I get Forge t'cut 'em off when he got a minute."

"He won't be able to."

Gambit looked his former boss up and down, tested the weight of the staff in his hands, tapped it with a fingernail to hear it ring. Frowning, he demanded, "Dis adamantium?"

"It is."

Gambit held it out. "I appreciate de gesture, Boss, but all I want is my three months' wages. I got no interest in bein' indebted to you."

"Don't worry," Magneto assured him. "I haven't given you anything so expensive as to be irreplaceable. I know where I can always get more."

"So where are we going, exactly?" Jean asked Logan, after a long stretch of no helpful communication from him. "And who are we trying to find there?"

"Washington."

"State, right?"

"DC."

"Are you serious?"

Silence.

"We're going to DC? Into the lion's den?"

"No choice. We've gotta find someone. Nick Fury."

"Fury? Your military contact?"

"Former. We're not on speaking terms right now. I called him a few weeks back, to ask for his help giving us a heads-up if things got ugly."

"From the way last night worked out, I'm guessing he didn't want to help us."

"No, he did. If I spilled my guts about X-23. You remember her. The kid."

"I remember. But didn't she . . . that thing with HYDRA . . . ?"

"On the official paperwork, yeah. But she's still alive, and I know it, and Fury knows it. He wants to nab her before Creed can. And I'd rather that nobody nabbed her. But there's one problem: I don't know where she is, either."

"So we need to know what Fury knows."

"Yeah."

"Well, why go to Washington?" Jean lifted the Cerebro helmet from its place under the control panel.

"Good luck. Everybody in Fury's outfit gets trained in telepathic resistance. No way you can crack his head from this far away, even with Cerebro."

"Watch me." Jean slipped the helmet over her head and closed her eyes. "Can you give me an image of him, please?"

She felt Logan's hazy and generally uncooperative mind open up a little, showing her the face of a grim, serious career soldier with a patch over one eye. She took the image and sank with it into the complicated telepathic/technological maze that was Cerebro. It was easy enough to extend its range down to the planet below, where every human mind blazed like a light with a voice. But she was nowhere near DC yet. She took a deep breath and stretched.

Too far. She could feel her head starting to throb. With a twist of concentration akin to doing two different tasks with two different hands, she reached inside her skull with her TK to feel where the pressure was building up. Just a little bit of a squeeze . . .

The ache receded—still present, but manageable, as long as she didn't lose her concentration. She kept breathing and extended farther. Aloud, she asked, "Is he a mutant?"

"No."

Dang. Cerebro had been built first, and primarily, as a mutant-locator. Ordinary humans were harder to find. "Do you know where he might be?"

Logan rattled off the address of SHIELD headquarters. "He'll figure I'm coming after him. That's their securest facility."

"We need some Google maps in this thing," Jean complained.

She could hear Logan chuckle. "Can you open your eyes?"

"Um . . ." She was already trying to process a lot of information from her TK and her telepathy; throwing in another sense would be difficult. "I think so. For a second."

"I've got a map on the screen."

She edged her eyes open. The map was there, drawing a neat red line between the spot over which they were flying and the front door of SHIELD headquarters. It brought order to the chaos in her brain, showing her where to go, the cluster of minds on which she needed to focus.

"I got him," she announced, her voice breathy from effort and concentration. "He knows I'm in here . . ."

"It's okay. He would have known anyway."

"Almost . . . dang, he's good, he's fighting me."

"Hurry up. He's probably going for a sedative to knock himself out before you can get what you want."

"Got it." She cut the connections to Cerebro, opened her eyes, and gently released the containing pressure on her headache. The pain was still present, but barely noticeable; reading in the car gave her worse headaches than that. "I got it all. Swing west-northwest."

Logan obediently brought the chopper around.

"Last year she hit five facilities in the U.S. and Canada, one in Russia, and one in Poland, inside a four-month period. They were all places that you'd lived, or been involved with somehow. When they had records on you, she copied them or stole them. The last hit was in early October, a base in northern Ontario."

"I know the place."

"After that, the action died down and they kind of lost her scent. As it were."

Logan was silent for a minute. Then he demanded, "When were you gonna tell me you could do that?"

"Do what?"

"That's gotta be five times farther than you ever reached in your life, even on the big Cerebro at the house. How'd you get that kind of range, and why the . . ." He caught himself, swallowed the profanity she could see fighting to tack itself onto the sentence, and finished, "and why didn't you let anybody know about it?"

Jean felt her head turn away, involuntarily, as though she were ashamed. "Scott knows."

"Oh, Scott knows."

He'd slipped; there'd been tangible jealousy in his voice. "Yes."

"And the pair of you decided to just keep it to yourselves, huh?"

"When was I gonna tell you, Logan? When do you talk to me?"

The accusation hit home. He hadn't talked to her, outside of common civilities and strictly necessary business talk, in months. He didn't respond to her question.

Guilt flooded through Jean's brain and bloodstream. She was fine with yelling at Logan when he had the decency to yell back, but she'd drawn blood with that last barbed comment, and she hated to see him bleed. She lowered her voice and let the issue drop. "Everyone's been so . . . absorbed, with mutant registration and wondering what was going to happen. I never really found a good time to show off my new parlor trick. I didn't mean to keep it a secret. I just didn't have anyone else to talk to."

No response. Logan's eyes scanned the air in front of the windshield, watching Velocity push shreds of mid-afternoon clouds out of her way.

"Logan?"

Under his breath, half to himself, he asked, "What're you lookin' for, Kid? Why not just come to me? You know where I sleep. What're you after?"

Jean sat back in her chair and rubbed her shoulder where the harness strap had been digging into it. The subject had been dropped; on they went. "If I were her, what would I want?"

This caught Logan's attention; he turned his head to watch her out of the corner of his eye.

"I've gotten my payback on the people who made me what I am. But what else have I got? No family to go to, no hometown, not even a name. My whole history is project files that went down with the HYDRA ship. I wanted those to disappear. But now I've got nothing, no tie to anybody in the whole world . . . except you."

"But she's not coming to me," Logan reminded her.

"She's not looking for you. She's looking for herself. Think about it. You're like . . . don't take this the wrong way, Logan, but you're like her father. At least the closest thing she's gonna get to family. And she needs a family history to figure out who she is. It's the same way Kurt was so fascinated with Mystique. She needs to know who you are and where you come from. Which is reason enough to avoid you; you wouldn't tell anybody that if they stuck splinters under your fingernails."

"I got my reasons."

"Yeah," Jean sighed. "I know you do." She shook her head and continued, "So the best thing for her to do now is to try retracing your footsteps . . . she what she can learn from the places where you've been."

Logan appeared to be thinking this over. Jean sat back and let him think.

"Makes sense," he allowed at last.

"Thank you." Jean nodded her head in as much of a graceful, acknowledging bow as she could manage while still strapped into the co-pilot's seat. "It doesn't tell us where she is now, though."

"Yeah, it does." Logan leaned forward and adjusted a few things on the control panel, re-defining their flight path. "It just doesn't make us happy about it."

The X-Men had staked claims to the last three dorm rooms at the end of the twisting, many-cornered hallway on the third level of the Avalon station. The hall entrance was the only door Scott had seen so far with a lock, a palm scanner. He'd checked the computer logs of who was authorized to enter: his whole team was there, and all of the Brotherhood guys. Sabertooth was conspicuously absent, which gave him some comfort. At least they had a place to hide from something.

The first of the X-men's dorms was for the younger boys; their pajamas and spare uniforms lay on bare, unmade mattresses, and off-white sheets and scratchy, industrial yellow blankets were piled on the floor. The girls, across the hall, had taken the trouble to make up four of the beds. One bunk, upper and lower, probably belonged to Rogue and Kitty, respectively; the lower bunk opposite had to be Amara's. The other bottom bunk, by the door, had Jean's carefully-folded pajama shirt on the pillow. No bunk for Storm. With her claustrophobia, there was no way she could even walk into a windowless room this small, much less sleep there.

Come to think of it, Scott wasn't too sure he could sleep in here, either. Good thing he'd probably be sleeping in prison tonight.

The last room had been taken over by the older boys. Scott chose the lower bunk next to the door, the one that mirrored Jean's. He didn't bother with the blankets; just tossed his blood-spattered t-shirt and shorts onto the bare mattress. He had no clothes beyond those and the uniform on his back. That'd have to be dealt with before this plan got set into motion. He wasn't getting into a national press conference wearing his training uniform. And showering and shaving might end up being a good idea, just for the sake of not looking like a crazy person on national tv.

He just had to finish training, leave everything as organized as he could, and get out of here before Jean and Logan could get back and stop him. Because they could, and they would. He was lucky Professor Xavier hadn't called them back already to do just that.

He emerged into the hall and turned to weave his way back to the stairs. On either side of the hallway, more dorm room doors stood like guards. There were a lot of them. How many people was Magneto planning on housing up here?

One of the doors moved. Scott jumped backward, giving himself more reaction space, and bringing his hand to the control on his visor.

Not Sabertooth. Just Lance.

Scott dropped his hand and the battle-ready tension in his spine, letting out his breath in one relieved rush. "Scared the living daylights out of me, Alvers."

"Likewise," Lance answered; he was breathing hard, too. His was still a little bit pale, but the seasickness drugs seemed to have helped.

Scott nodded at the door Lance had emerged from. "That your guys's room?"

"Yeah." Lance pointed at the door behind Scott. "Wanda's got that one."

"Okay. Hey, if you need anything, the team's gonna be all down at the end there."

Lance made a half-hearted attempt at a smile. "What we need is some better mattresses. Those aren't gonna be much better than sleeping on the floor."

"Don't think we can help you there. Ours looked pretty awful, too." Scott twisted his neck, stretching the aching muscles. Judging from Lance's half-slouched posture, his back was killing him, too, and that was more than the two of them had had in common for years. "So is the Brotherhood coming to training?"

Lance shrugged. "Doubt it. I dunno if you've met us, but we're not really the 'training' kind."

"Well, you used to do okay at it."

"That was then."

Before Kitty dumped him, Scott finished silently. He sighed. "Look, Lance, I know you and your guys are none of my business. But . . . all the Brotherhood has now is each other. And whether or not you want to team up with the X-Men, you're going to have to team up with yourselves. All those guys . . . Blob and Toad and even Pietro. . . they need someone, a leader, to hold them together through whatever's going to happen. And they're not gonna take me, so it's gonna have to be you."

Lance looked up at him, incredulity sneaking out from behind the hair that fell over his forehead and his eyes. Scott backed off. "Sorry. Like I said . . . none of my business. I've got to go train my team." He turned and headed for the gym. "Later."

"Yeah," Lance called back.

"You'll have to be back downstairs soon," Magneto told Gambit. "It sounded as though your team had a job for you. They'll wonder where you are."

"Dey always wonder," Gambit said, nonchalant. "What's de job?"

"High-security house breaking, from what I gathered."

"Sounds like fun."

"They're fortunate to have you. Your skills and your powers must be a great asset to Xavier and his team."

"Yeah, well . . . you'd know."

"I would. I certainly paid enough for those skills. Though I must admit that I got my money's worth. I imagine that since taking your Master's Mark, your rates have gone up."

"You heard about that?" Gambit had to fight to keep himself from grinning. Having a rep that big was no bad thing.

"So did a lot of people. I was impressed."

"Je vous remerci."

"So just how much are you charging Charles?"

"Why?" Gambit shot Magneto a canny, sideways glance. "Looking t'outbid him?"

"Idlest curiosity. Charles has the gift of inspiring loyalty, something I've never been able to master. I'm interested to know what he did to win yours. Colossus I can understand; he's an idealist. But for such a cool-headed capitalist as yourself to join himself to Charles Xavier's crusade . . . that is a great surprise. I'd like to know how he did it."

Gambit shrugged, a self-congratulating smile teasing onto his face. "Red-headed bait."

"The girl?"

"Since you care t'put it like dat, ouais. La fille."

"So not a capitalist after all. A hedonist."

Gambit let a smile quirk up the corner of his mouth, but denied nothing.

"And now that you have her?"

"'Now dat I have her' . . . what?"

"Why do you stay? One only has to look at Rogue to see that she would follow you anywhere you chose to go. What, then, is keeping you with Charles Xavier? I find it hard to believe that you espouse his cause."

"Patron, I don' do causes. You, him, Ghandi, Hitler . . . all de same to me. I'm a LeBeau. I learned my cause from my father. Protect your own. Go wid' your gut. Let de rest of de world do as it please."

"Simplistic, but practical."

"Gets me by."

"But I would think, if a man's first priority were to, as you say, protect his own, that such a man wouldn't take lying down what happened last night. A home and property pillaged, its rightful owners lucky to escape with their lives. Storm shot out of the sky like a game bird. Bobby left to drag his bleeding body to the grave. Sam so traumatized that he snuck back to the hangar three times last night to be sick in the Blackbird's lavatory. And the young woman for whom you started this crusade in the first place looking for all the world like her drunken lover's been beating her senseless. As we speak, Charles Xavier is laying plans with his team leaders, discussing how best to set all these people up to take the same abuse again. So what I cannot understand is why a man like you would follow a man like him. Particularly when your powers assure me that you cannot be telepathically coerced into doing anything you don't want to do."

Gambit watched Magneto, wary, careful, waiting for him to push a little bit too far. Behind his eyes he could see it all again: The silver glints of Wolverine's claw points in the dark, the way Shadowcat's hands shook as she tried to hold onto Velocity's steering yoke, how Cyclops recoiled from the sprays of blood that slashed across his face and his t-shirt. And he could hear Rogue's mental voice, exhausted and disoriented and hurt and sick, insisting Ah kin do it as she dragged herself back into the air to fulfill the orders Professor Xavier had given her. But he could also see where Magneto wanted to lead him, and he didn't like being led.

"If you're waitin' fo' me to stab Xavier in de back and start towin' yo' line again, best get a comfy chair, 'cuz it'll be awhile."

"I'm not waiting for you to do anything. All I have to wait for is the day that Xavier's beloved, civilized human race stabs him. And when that day comes, I want to know who I will be up against. Cyclops, for example. Will he see the outcome through without Charles to guide him?"

"Don' write him off. Scott may look like a golden retriever, but he'll fight like a pit bull. I never seen him start one single thing and not see it through to de end."

"And where he goes, Jean Grey goes, I assume."

"I assume. I wouldn't lay money on Colossus, either. If you've really taken his family off de table, den he's gone. Xavier's baitin' his trap wid brunettes dese days."

"What about Rogue?"

Gambit felt a hot cascade of anger run under his skin, rising to his eyes and making the color flare a little in warning. There it was: the Too Far. With all the grim finality of the click of a primed nine millimeter, he announced, "Off. Limits."

Magneto raised both his hands, palms forward, out of the folds of his cape, bowing his head in surrender. "I withdraw the question."

Gambit remained motionless, every defense up, his line drawn deep into the sand between them.

The floor under him shuddered. He spared a glance downward and saw a dark square appear around his feet, lowering him back down into the public levels of the station. Within seconds, they were both back where they'd started, in the clean-scrubbed stainless steel kitchen with a dish towel hanging over the sink partition.

"Go find your commander," Magneto ordered. "He has a mission for you."

Gambit nodded. "Yes, sir." He headed for the door, but paused before exiting into the hall. With his left hand, he pulled open his coat. The tip of the staff gleamed at the top of the long inside pocket that had held its predecessor for so many years. "Hey, Boss."

"Yes?"

"Countin' dis one, you only got twenty-nine left to go."

He could see Magneto fighting the question, but in the end he asked it. "Twenty-nine what?"

He let the coat fall closed. "Pieces of silver."

Author's Notes:

My profoundest apologies for the delay on this chapter! Life caught up with me . . .

French Lesson!

C'est certain: That's for sure.

Je vous remerci: I thank you. Just like in English, it's a little old-fashioned and grandiose.

Patron: Boss.