The heavens spit me out
From ethers tragic I am born again

- from "The End Is The Beginning Is The End" by The Smashing Pumpkins

In the lab, shackled to a cold steel table, Rogue cursed herself for a fool. She had to be, because only an idiot would have wound up in this situation. She'd had a thousand and one chances to avoid it, and yet here she was.

She ran through the list point by point. If she'd just been faster she could've gotten away from Vertigo. If she'd been stronger she could've overpowered the big woman and the rest of Sabretooth's buddies. If she'd been smarter she would've told one of the X-Men where she was going. Heck, if she'd been smarter she would've discussed Risty's idea with Professor Xavier before ever saying yes or no. But she hadn't, she hadn't had the skill or the brains to do any of that, and now she was going to pay for her idiocy.

And she had the sick feeling in her gut that she was never gonna see Remy again.

She closed her eyes and leaned her head back, resting it against the metal, and starting condemning herself all over again.

"Hey."

Rogue opened her eyes and glared at her "roommate." "What?"

"Don't beat yourself up over this," the woman said, nodding at their surroundings. "If they got me, they could get anyone."

"Whatever," Rogue said, dismissing the whole conversation.

The woman tilted her head to one side, looking at Rogue with a curious half-smile. "That's a pretty heavy attitude."

"Yeah, well, maybe I got a reason for it."

The woman blew her blonde hair out of her eyes and said, "Yeah, well, it looks like we're going to be here by ourselves for a while. Introductions?"

She sighed and said, grudgingly, "I'm Rogue."

"Carol. Your name is Rogue?"

"Yeah. I had it legally changed."

"Really?"

"Of course not," she snapped, frustrated with the universe in general.

"So what is it?" Carol asked, and when she got no response, said, "Okay, I'll just start guessing. Marie? Kate?"

Rogue wrinkled her nose in distaste. "Try 'none of the above.' And I ain't gonna tell you anyway, so you might as well drop it."

"Fair enough," Carol said, nodding. She still looked amused. "By any chance, you didn't see a guy with wings on the way in, did you?"

"No, they had me sedated or something," Rogue said, but she looked at Carol with new interest. "A guy with wings?"

"Big, white wings. Feathers and everything. It's okay if you didn't," Carol said. "I'm fairly sure they've got him in isolation - he tried to escape this morning, or so I heard."

"I have seen him," Rogue said, now definitely excited; it wasn't much, but if Carol knew one confirmed mutant like the Angel, it made her hope that maybe the other woman knew someone else - someone else who was ready to play calvary. "At Christmas. We were investigating the angel sightings, and we wound up fightin' alongside him."

Carol, too, looked as though her interest was peaked. "So you're a fighter?"

Rogue hesitated, not sure how much more detail she should go into. "Yeah, I, uh, I've had some trainin'."

"With a group." It wasn't a question. Rogue's face must have given her away, because Carol smiled. "You said 'we.' 'We were investigating.' "

"Oh. Yeah, with a group." Rogue bit her lip and then asked, point-blank, "Are you a mutant?"

Carol laughed. It was a surprisingly beautiful and genuinely joyful sound, especially given their circumstances. "Oh, Rogue, I'm a lot more than that."

"How-" Rogue started to ask, but the rest of it died on her lips as the locked door slid open.

"Ah, getting to know each other, I see," Mr. Sinister said, looking from Rogue to Carol and smiling another one of those pointed-teeth smiles. "Remarkably prescient of you."

Carol tossed her head back and said, with no small amount of scorn, "Get bent."

Rogue nodded emphatically, scowling at him. "And jump off a cliff while yer at it."

Sinister's smile never dimmed. "My apologies for the delay; there was some confusion regarding an inconsequential matter. It now appears that we will have to move forward at an increased pace. Shall we begin?"

Mystique tapped her foot impatiently. They did not have much time, and she already knew that they were going to waste several precious minutes in a blame-tossing session. In a way, she recognized that it was her fault and hers alone, but she also held LeBeau partly responsible. If it wasn't for his constant, irritating presence, she might not have been forced into accepting Sinister's offer so quickly, before she had the chance to properly evaluate the situation.

She was staking out a shadowed street corner some distance from one of the hidden lab entrances - the one she knew LeBeau had used before, and thus was most likely to use again. Traffic was light to nonexistent, so she spotted the headlights from a good way off. Shifting her eyes to a better shape - cats had excellent night vision - she could also see that the car attached to the headlights was Summers', and it was indeed being driven by LeBeau.

She calmly stepped out of the shadows and into the path of the car; he slammed on the brakes and sent it into a controlled, squealing stop that caused a small cloud of smoke to billow from the wheels.

"Does Cyclops know you've got his car?" Mystique asked, crossing her arms over her chest.

"Don' start wit' me, Darkholme," LeBeau snarled, his accent coming through much stronger than usual. He shut off the engine and jumped out of the car. "You so far on my bad side right now you don' wanna know it."

Mystique studied her fingernails. "Mm-hm. Ready to listen?"

LeBeau stopped an inch away from her, anger written all over his face. "No. Talk."

She smiled, knowing it was not a nice smile, and started to say, "He's holding her in the-"

His hand shot out and grabbed her by the front of her outfit, yanking the black material - and her - forward. "WHY?"

"Because," she said, eyes narrowed, and he let go in frustration when she said nothing else. She brushed off her top, and added, "You don't understand, catfish - I was trying to help her."

"Your kind o' help no one need," he said. "An' how if you tryin' t'help her, you got t'call me now, got t'save her, hahn?"

"Because I was lied to," she said, drawing herself straighter to help deflect the humiliation of that statement.

"You t'ink you can dance wit' the devil an' not get lied to?" he demanded, managing to look incredulous and outraged at the same time. "Essex ain't do nothin' but lie!"

"I know that," she snapped, and immediately regretted it; it made her seem foolish and petty. The latter she'd own up to, but not the former. Not for a moment, and especially not in front of a sorry little sneakthief like LeBeau. "Essex had no intention of giving her control over her power. He's using her to create a weapon of some kind. I don't particularly like that idea."

He snorted. "Only 'cause the weapon ain't gonna be yours."

She scowled. The idiot was right, but she wasn't going to admit it. "Get this through that thick Cajun skull of yours, LeBeau - I care about Rogue just as much as you do-"

"Got a strange way showin' it," he muttered.

"-and I don't want that butcher to hurt her," she finished, choosing to ignore the interruption. "Which he will do if we stand out here and argue all night. Agreed?"

LeBeau looked at her critically for a long moment, then nodded with visible reluctance. "Oui."

"Good. Then listen..."

"Absurdly low-tech, I know," Mr. Sinister was saying, tightening the metal band on Carol's arm, "but it should do the job just fine."

Rogue, her own arm bared to the elbow, tried to break out of her restraints again. Their tables had been adjusted so that they were side-by-side, and she knew what was coming next. She also knew that there was absolutely no way to get out of there.

She would've been cursing herself, but she had the feeling it was a little too late for "if only's."

Sinister selected a syringe from the tray on the nearby counter and held it up, critically examining the contents. Rogue held her breath; she wasn't exactly scared of needles, but the wicked point on this one made her fearful. She hoped he wasn't going to stick her, then felt guilty for wishing it on Carol.

"A paralytic agent of my own design," he said, depressing the plunger until the clear liquid beaded up on the tip of the needle. "Thus far, it's worked very well on mammals, including lesser primates. This should be a most informative trial run, as well as preventing a repeat of this morning's foolishness."

"Get on with it, already," Carol said, tossing her hair out of her eyes with unfractured bravado. "I'm getting bored."

Sinister smiled. "And your new friend is hurting herself. Rogue, dear, please stop that."

Rogue, who had been jerking against her arm restraint in a hopelessly futile attempt to free herself, glared at him and did not stop, despite the fact that her wrist was chafed red and starting to bleed. "Bite me, you sick creep!"

"Manners, manners," Sinister said, making a tsk noise of reproach. His tone hardened as he gestured with the syringe. "I wasn't intending to use this on you, but I will if I must."

Carol said, "Just stop, Rogue. It's not worth it."

Rogue looked at her confident, unafraid face, so accepting of her fate, and at the gleaming syringe. Part of her wanted to go out fighting, and part of her wanted to curl up meekly and avoid further pain. She'd never been a situation like this; the closest experience she had to draw upon was when Magneto kidnapped her and the others and held them on Asteroid M, but he had never tried to run experiments on her.

With a final lunge against the metal and shout of raw anger, she gave into Carol's advice and stopped struggling.

Sinister nodded, a pleased smile flickering across his bloodless features. "A wise choice." He turned and calmly selected a vein in Carol's arm, then put the tip of the needle onto her skin. "This may sting," he told her, and shoved the needle down. There was a moment of resistance before the needle punctured the skin. A second later he emptied the syringe of liquid, and a network of red lines began spreading beneath Carol's skin, following the blood vessels. Rogue, now sick with dread right to her core, wondered three things: what the hell was that stuff, how much did it hurt, and was in store for her?

Carol flinched, but that was all. She turned a wide, insincere smile on Sinister and confided in a stage whisper, "I've had better."

"I'm sure you have," he said, and returned the syringe to the tray. He stepped out from between the tables and pushed a quick series of buttons on the tables' controls that made them move closer together. Then he walked to the intercom unit he'd used before and said, "Sabretooth. I'll be needing you shortly."

"Be right there," Rogue heard Sabretooth say, faintly and through a lot of static.

With a smug, arrogant look that Rogue just itched to wipe off his face, Sinister returned to them and checked Carol's arm.

"I can't feel anything," Carol told him, almost bored.

"Splendid. I have to warn you, of course, that lying will result in some... unfortunate consequences for Rogue and her dear friend."

Carol rolled her eyes. "You're obviously bent on running some kind of hideous experiment with the two of us, so why not get it over with before we all die of old age, hmm? Even HYDRA scientists don't take this long. Less talk and more torture."

"Again," he said, removing her wrist restraint and testing her arm one more time, "do be careful what you wish for, Ms. Danvers."

Sinister then turned to Rogue. Before he could do anything, Rogue said, "Lemme guess. 'This may sting.' "

He inclined his head marginally. "Actually, I suspect it will feel far worse than that."

She swallowed hard and steeled herself for whatever was coming. "I hope you die," she told him, with every bit of feeling she could muster. "I hope you die a miserable, hurtin' death, and I know that when you do, you're goin' straight down to burn in-"

But she never got to finish her sentence, because Mr. Sinister calmly brought Carol's hand into contact with her arm, and her mutant power kicked in immediately. She sucked in a breath. The last thing she realized before everything went crazy was that Sinister meant to hold the contact as long as possible.

And then she was lost, swamped under a deluge of telepathic information without beginning or end. Carol's life flashed through her mind like a tape running backwards and forwards and skipping over random intervals, showing her birthday parties, a bubbling tank of goldfish, reading books by nightlight, partying 'til dawn, fighter planes soaring overhead, stars stretching forever, a first kiss, a last kiss, dodging gunfire, barking orders, a new puppy, a mother, a father, a badge with her name on it, an arcing pillar of smoke, jumping out of a plane, flying, falling, flying again, blue skies, the ground far below, blue- and white-skinned men fighting, a burst of light from a strange weapon, a new car, interviewing for a job, a young man with serious eyes and a warm smile...

And the images, the memories, went on and on and on until they blurred into one single, swirling mass that spiraled out before her mind's eye into infinity and then looped back to swallow her whole.

She started to scream.