Note: Yes, that's a real church. They have a website - although I can't find the URL again for the life of me. Ah well.
If somebody up there likes me somebody up there cares
Deliver me from evil save me from these wicked snares
- from "Saint Augustine In Hell" by Sting
Sabretooth was getting bored. He didn't mind getting pulled off the pointless tunnel search, but he did mind being forced to wait outside the lab door while Essex did whatever it was he was doing. So far, it involved a lot of screaming, which was why he minded being forced to wait outside. Essex had all the fun.
He was also getting restless. He knew some of the Morlocks had escaped the killing last night, and now that one of the X-kids was involved, the chances of discovery by Xavier or another of his kind had racheted up considerably. The smart thing, in his opinion, would be to clear out of the lab now and finish all the experiments somewhere else. But he had the distinct idea that
Essex - he couldn't get used to calling the guy "Mr. Sinister" - was under a lot of pressure to wrap things up fast.
Thing was, he couldn't imagine who or what could put that type of pressure on Essex. He'd worked with the scientist for a long time - off and on, of course, since he'd worked with a lot of other people - and he'd never known him to do anything except in his own sweet time.
The screaming cut out abruptly, and Sabretooth straightened, hoping this meant he would get to do something. Sure enough, Essex emerged from the door a few moments later and inclined his head in Sabretooth's direction - an obvious order to someone who (frustratingly) spent most of his time following orders.
He followed Essex back into the lab and, without much interest, saw that both Rogue and the blonde were unconscious.
"Take Ms. Danvers to the surface and dispose of her body," Essex said, releasing the metal shackles holding the blonde to the table. "She's of no further use."
Sabretooth caught the body before it fell and easily slung it over his shoulder.
"The others are to have no knowledge of this," Essex added as he reached the door. The warning was crystal clear, and he wondered about it for a moment. Essex had been keeping the other four in the dark about Danvers; what was that about? Just as quickly, though, he forgot about it. He wasn't supposed to think. He was just supposed to do the heavy lifting. And besides, it didn't really matter to him as long as he got paid.
Sabretooth grunted acknowledgement and started the long job of lugging the body to the surface. He was hearing a pulse and some faint breathing, so Danvers wasn't dead, but she sure wasn't going to be giving anyone trouble anytime soon.
The other Marauders were out in the sewers, looking for live flesh, and there was no danger of running into them. He could still smell Angel's scent in the hallway, and, stronger, the little bone-girl's, and he made sure to take another exit route just in case the authorities were poking around in the subway.
He came up in an alley in Brooklyn and shifted the body to his arms while he tried to figure out what to do with her. Essex had ordered her "disposed of," which carried a very specific set of connotations. She was alive, so either he killed her, or dumped her somewhere out-of-the-way. Ordinarily - if she had been awake - he would have killed her. But there was no joy to be had in killing someone who couldn't fight back, couldn't beg and plead for their life, couldn't scream in pain and fear.
The Morlocks had been a lot of fun.
He thought about what to do with her body, and decided he didn't feel like killing her, so he started thinking about where he could leave her. A hospital was the first choice, but getting there unnoticed was problematic. So where else?
Sabretooth growled. He didn't like this. He didn't like following Essex's orders like an obedient servant (at least not when they didn't coincide with his own wishes), and he really didn't like being faced with a dilemma with no easy solution.
The problem was solved when he sniffed the air and caught the faintest trace of incense underneath the layers of city smells. Incense meant a church, somewhere nearby, and a church was as good a place to dump a comatose woman as anywhere else.
He left the alley, the body still in his arms, and saw the church almost immediately. There were a few people on the street, but he ignored them and they ignored him, and no one raised a fuss when he disposed of Carol Danvers' body on the doorstep of the convent of St. Gabriel the Archangel and then left just as calmly as he'd come.
He didn't go back to the lab immediately, but instead took his time wandering around the city, looking for some excitement - or at least a few cheap drinks.
Which made things infinitely easier for the people who were trying to break into the lab.
Mystique, who was not as stupid as she looked, had opted to shift into Sabretooth's form for the duration of the rescue mission. As a disguise, it would fool the bad guys for maybe a minute, since "Sabretooth" would be walking, placidly, with Gambit. Everyone - especially Essex - knew that the real Sabretooth and Gambit had a long-standing dislike of each other, stemming back to the time two years ago when Sabretooth had tried to eviscerate Remy LeBeau, and Remy Lebeau
had retaliated with a charged card in a very bad spot. The only good thing to come out of that, in Gambit's opinion, was that his injuries had been bad enough for Jean-Pierre to pull his son out of Essex's service. And the pampering by Belle during his recovery hadn't bothered him either.
After Mystique had filled Gambit in on Essex's recent operations, they'd stashed Scott's car in a better hiding place than the middle of a street, and had made their way back to the lab entrance. That had been a more difficult job than it might have been, because they were trying to avoid the cameras and other sensors that Essex had set up around the perimeter. But they'd managed to make it without being seen; they could tell only because Essex would have sent the Marauders
out if he knew they were there.
Gambit hung back as Mystique entered the appropriate code at the door. He didn't bother trying to memorize the numbers, because he knew Essex would change them after tonight. This morning, he amended, checking his watch. They were on the other side of midnight now; he'd been up for almost twenty-four hours, but he didn't feel tired. Just the opposite, actually.
Silently, they entered the door, with "Sabretooth" leading the way. Gambit followed at a discreet distance, a handful of cards out and ready to go. He'd been in this lab once before, on a brief visit that had lasted under an hour, and if he'd been on his own this time he wasn't sure he could have found Rogue.
Mystique was taking her time, peering carefully around corners and pausing at every door that looked like it might be open. Gambit understood the need for caution, but it was driving him insane to creep along at a snail's pace while Rogue was in danger.
Hang on, chere, he thought, urgently.
Mystique's already painfully slow forward movement stopped altogether. He was about to ask her why when he heard the unmistakable sound of approaching footsteps.
Without a word and without a sound, Mystique and Gambit retreated to the nearest door and slid inside the darkened room beyond. She kept the door open just a crack, shifted into a small shape - looked like a white lab mouse, but he wasn't sure - and took up a position that allowed her to see into the hallway. For his part, Gambit hid behind the door and tried to cover the glow from his charged card.
The footsteps drew nearer, then proceeded down the hallway without a single pause. When they had faded away completely, Mystique shifted back into Sabretooth and whispered, "Essex. He came from the lab where Rogue and D- ah, where she was being held."
He caught the near-slip and narrowed his eyes. It figured - even now, Mystique would play it cagey. "Well, then, we should hurry 'fore he comes back."
She said something disparaging under her breath and opened the door again. Back in the hallway, they moved at a faster pace, passing doors and hall junctions without stopping. Finally Mystique came to a halt in front of a door with a lock mechanism on it.
"Well?" she demanded, gesturing at it.
He studied the lock for a moment, forcing down his concern over Rogue and reminding himself of his earlier admonition. Think like a thief, not a high-school kid. Good advice.
"I can crack it," he finally said, and had the surreal experience of watching Sabretooth smile a smile that was pure Mystique. "Gonna take a minute, though."
"Then stop talking and get started," she snapped.
He rolled his eyes and crouched in front of the lock. It wasn't code-based, which was lucky because they didn't know the code, and it wasn't anything fancy like a DNA print or retinal scan, which was lucky because not even Mystique could duplicate DNA and he wasn't sure she could perfectly duplicate a retina. No, it was just a simple lock dressed up as something bigger -
although to someone who hadn't been trained by the Guild, it would have been a nightmare.
He pulled out his lockpicks from their place in his body armor and got to work, muttering, "Can't believe you haul me all th' way down here jus' t'open a lock... couldn't get it yourself, hahn?"
She made a pretty convincing growl. "Shut up."
He smirked and went back to the lock. A second later he felt it click in all the right places and the lock mechanism released. He stood and tucked the picks away, pulling out cards instead.
Mystique opened the door - and the alarms went off, filling the hallway with flashing red lights and a piercing siren.
"Oh, very nice, catfish!" she yelled at him over the noise, looking extraordinarily irate.
"Hey, I say I open it - never say I disable it!" he yelled back, and pushed past her into the room. What he saw made his heart stop and froze him in place. Just for a moment.
Rogue was unconscious, lying on her back on some kind of metal table, restrained with metal clamps over her wrists and ankles - but he still held out hope that they'd made it in time, because she looked unharmed. Mystique came in behind him and made another growling noise.
The moment of immobility passed, and he moved forward and tried to pop the restraints open. No go. There was a control pad, but he didn't know the code.
"Don' worry, chere, have you out in a second," he murmured, leaning over her, and tapped the center of each restraint. The touches left behind faint orange-pink glows, and he shielded her face when the minature explosions went off.
"Sabretooth" shoved past him and grabbed Rogue, lifting her easily. The alarm was still going off all around them; as they went back into the hallway, he thought he heard people shouting. Ahead of them, at a corridor junction, a door came down over the hallway that led back to their entrance point.
"We can't go back the way we came!" Mystique said, stating the obvious. Not as dumb as she looked? Right.
"Don' be so sure," he told her, and charged a card as high as it could take. It wasn't a blast door, just a deterrant, and he thought a well-aimed card would do the trick. He threw it and sent another one after it, just in case - an unnecessary action, because the first card blew a large, shredded hole in the door. He didn't see what became of the second card, but it didn't matter.
They ran down the hallway at top speed, the Marauders shouting and close enough for Gambit to hear their voices. A few razor discs went blurring past his face, wildly inaccurate, and embedded themselves in the metal wall around them. But they had too great a lead, and by the time they hit the street, he knew they were clean away.
He jumped into the car and started it while Mystique strapped Rogue into the backseat. Then he hit the accelerator for all he was worth, and the trio fled into the night.
In the backseat, Rogue's face tightened into a brief grimace. With some last, struggling vestige of consciousness - so softly that neither of her rescuers could hear it - she breathed a name she'd never known: "Warren."
"They got away," Harpoon reported, leading the four Marauders back into the laboratory complex.
Mr. Sinister, waiting for them by the ruined hallway door, was not surprised. Thus far the Marauders, aside from Sabretooth - and where the hell is that savage? He should have returned by now - had proven to be astoundingly ineffective. He had already resolved to never use them again, and was eagerly awaiting the moment when he could dismiss the whole lot.
"Scour the vandalized lab and see what you can find," he ordered, not bothering to hide the anger in his voice. The only thing preventing him from killing them all right now was the cautious hope that whoever had stolen the Rogue girl would be easy to trace.
He had already discovered that the surveillance systems within the complex itself had been disabled - through the unsubtle means of a smashed control panel and gutted wiring. That bespoke impatience. He was highly annoyed, but he was also curious to learn who had been behind it.
The mercenaries went off to do as told, leaving Sinister to examine the charred metal of the door. It had clearly been in an explosion, but the nature of the explosive eluded him for the moment. Perhaps in the debris - those fragments that had been blown into the hallway beyond - perhaps there he would find something.
He stepped through the gaping hole, making a metal note to strengthen the doors, and looked down at the debris. One object immediately lept out at him: a small, thin, roughly rectangular shape with varicolored markings.
He crouched and picked up the object, holding it gingerly between thumb and forefinger. The image was singed, but still recognizable: a jack of hearts. Fury bubbled up within him. LeBeau. That little pickpocket, to whom he had shown so much mercy...
Could not have done this alone, Sinister realized suddenly. Security had been modified since LeBeau had last been in this particular laboratory complex. He would have needed an inside source in order to bypass everything, and the list of suspected turncoats was short. Sabretooth was not the kind to collaborate with former enemies. And the only other member of his band
who had known the whereabouts of the Rogue girl was Mystique. Two betrayals in one night; quite the record.
Behind him the Marauders returned. "Nothing, boss," Arclight reported.
Sinister ground his teeth. Not only were they stupid, they were blind; the evidence was there in front of them. He stood and held the card up so that they could see it.
Vertigo frowned, clearly confused. "What does that mean?"
"It means Xavier has one of my experiments," he snarled, crunching the card in his fist. Not just any experiment, of course - the sole experiment that was designed to break him free of Apocalypse's thrall. It was gone, all gone, and he renewed his determination to make LeBeau and Darkholme regret their actions.
Unaware of the implications, the four Marauders looked back at him like the ignorant mercenaries they were.
"You want us to... fix it?" Riptide asked, exchanging a glance with the others.
Sinister considered that for perhaps a fraction of a second. "No. You've botched things well enough already. No, I must now give them something larger to concern themselves with. Riptide, Arclight, with me. The rest of you... amuse yourselves."
He turned on his heel and strode down the corridor. Riptide and Arclight obediently followed. The project timetable had suddenly sped up once agin, and four larger experiments were waiting.
His wings hurt. That was odd, Warren thought, because he distinctly remembered Sinister amputating them just above their bases. He'd heard of phantom limbs, but phantom wings seemed like an absurd concept. The thoughts didn't cause him any distress. That was probably because of the anesthesia, he decided. Or a sedative. Maybe both. Yeah. Just as well - he was
going to feel like hell when it wore off. Right now everything was nice and gray and untroubling. Even the pain from his wings didn't seem to be a big deal. He liked that. He sort of wished the grayness would never go away.
Something had woken him up, though, and taken him out of the even nicer blackness. He tried to remember what, found it took too much effort, and quit. So much easier to just lie there and not think...
An explosion. That was what woke him up. And people running in the hallway, shouting at each other. And an alarm, whooping somewhere in the building. He didn't hear any of that now, and he wondered if that was significant. Slowly, fuzzily, his mind processed the information. What would cause an explosion, and shouting, and alarms...? Hadn't he done something that caused those things - the shouting and alarms, anyway? Something...
Escape.
The word tore through the gray fog surrounding him, and he woke up - really woke up. He wasn't restrained. He was alone in the room. It was possible.
Escape. If people were escaping then he needed to find them-
Two bolts of pure pain shot down the length of his back as he tried to get up. He bit down hard on his lip to avoid crying out, and managed to stand despite the black dots swarming at the edges of his vision.
The door was a long way away, but he could make it. He had to make it.
He held onto the operating table with white-knuckled hands, limping his way towards freedom. An inch, then five inches, then a foot, then a yard...
The black dots swarmed again, and he paused. Breathing hurt his back, and he felt weird. Too light. He was overbalancing forward, compensating for a weight that was no longer there.
Gritting his teeth, he started forward again. Another foot, easier won this time, and another, and finally, finally, he collapsed against the wall next to the door and reached one hand onto the unlocked keypad.
And the door hissed open, revealing the black form of Sinister and two of his flunkies - the spinning guy and the butch girl - behind him.
Sinister raised one eyebrow. "Going somewhere, Mr. Worthington?"
"Not anymore?" Warren offered along with a weak smile, and his legs fell out from under him.
Blackness again.