Tested

Disclaimer: Characters and Premise are borrowed from the Marvel, I'm not making any money.

Part 4

"S' tonight's de night," Remy said toweling his hair dry as he watched Henri divide up their orders from room service.

"Yo' nervous?" Henri asked turning down the volume on the TV.

"Moi?" Remy asked grabbing a chair as he arched his eyebrows and generally did his best to look shocked at the suggestion. "After all de times yo' made me practice?"

"...No, I'm afraid Wolverine is no longer..." At the sound of the familiar voice from the television Remy jumped halfway back to his feet. Without a thought the butter knife he'd picked up was charged and flying across the room.

Henri stared in shock as the knife embedded itself in the TV screen, burying itself to the hilt where Xavier's image had been a moment earlier then exploded showering the room with bits of glass, plastic and metal. Disbelievingly he looked to Remy for an explanation.

The mutant teenager had snatched up his trench coat and his hand was already on the doorknob when Henri's gaze captured him. "I don' want to talk 'bout it," Remy exclaimed slamming the door after him as he left.

****** ****** ******

In her Jane Donis persona Archlight returned to the hotel from an early morning jog to find the lobby in shambles. There were three distinct bloodstains on the floor and a number of bullet holes in one wall. Their tour guide and bus driver was hovering around the Chelseys. Clarice had both her boys in her arms and was rocking them comfortingly, her eyes where distant though, stunned. Jim stood protectively over his family, looking shaken.

Archlight grabbed the bus drive and pulled him away, "What the fuck happened?" she demanded.

"She was just a kid," the man said. "She killed four soldiers, one with her bare hands, they said she was the assassin, she looked so harmless."

Archlight shook the man roughly, "What happened to her?" she demanded.

"They took her away," the man said. "She didn't look dangerous."

Archlight rolled her eyes and stormed up stairs.

****** ****** ******

Remy prowled the foreign streets restlessly. Henri had been teaching him the language but at the moment the sounds falling against his ears were pure gibberish.

He was focused, collected... Remy almost laughed at his own arrogance. He was in perfect control... except for those moments when he lost it completely.

It had taken nothing more than the sound of Xavier's voice to send both his emotions and powers reeling. Essex's methods didn't work, but he didn't have anything better.

It hurt and he hated it and ignoring the hurt didn't really make it go away. It lurked in the recesses of his mind and waited to ambush him the moment his guard slipped and the only thing more unendurable was to live with the pain all the time. Why wouldn't it go away?

****** ****** ******

Belle woke to the taste of her own blood in her mouth, the feel of gritty, slimy concrete under her cheek and the stink of rat droppings in her nose. Raising her head to look around the dingy cell took more effort than it should have and the sharp pain in her chest spoke of one or more broken ribs. A duller ache in her abdomen scared her more than it should have considering she didn't really want the baby anyway, but she couldn't deny the dread that touched her as she considered the effect of internal injuries on the fetus she carried.

She knew she risked a punctured lung with every movement but getting off the filthy floor of the cell where she'd been unceremoniously dumped mattered more than anything else at that particular moment. In her current battered condition the best Belle could manage was a slow crawl, but manage she did and after a few minutes she pulled herself onto the narrow, marginally cleaner pallet along the back wall of the cell.

"It weren' supposed to be like dis," was all she could think. It was supposed to be exciting and thrilling. She wasn't supposed to get caught. How could anyone catch her?

"How had it gone so wrong?" she wondered. "How had they known it was her?" She knew she'd done everything just like she was supposed to. She knew a random sweep of suspicious characters would be unlikely to pick up her. She knew that wasn't what had happened, they'd come for her, specifically for her. They'd been told there was no other explanation for what happened. Which meant she'd been betrayed.

****** ****** ******

Vertigo pulled Archlight into an alley. "She's being held in the jail on the west side of town, they beat her up pretty bad, the boss is not going to be happy."

"It's his own fucking fault for not letting us capture her for him," Archlight snapped.

"And I would love to see you tell HIM that," Vertigo shot back. "He's going to blame us if she dies."

"I wasn't the one sleeping up stairs while she was getting the stuffing knocked out of her," Archlight pointed out.

"No you were the one out jogging," Vertigo said. "We're both on his back black list if this goes sour."

"I don't see what's the big deal," Archlight replied, "It's some pathetic south of the boarder, century behind the times jail cell, we waltz in, grab the girl and waltz out. Sinister can figure out what to do with her after he patches the holes."

"And what about the two weeks until his terrescats are back on line?" Vertigo demanded. "It'd take less time to drive her back to the Seattle base."

"Oh right, I forgot about that," Archlight admitted. "What's the deal with them anyway? I tune out when he starts talking technobabble."

"Like I understand him," Vertigo said. "I just figure out how it's going to make my life hell. Why it does matter why? For all I know the alignment of the planets is wrong, it doesn't work it's that simple. Look I've got an idea."

****** ****** ******

Mindy White stormed the office like the hounds of hell were barking at her heals. She pushed past the receptionist without bothering with an explanation and threw open the doors to the inner office. "Belladonna Boudreaux, she and her baby are dying in your jail cell, you can't afford to let that happen!" she exclaimed as security rushed to drag her away.

The man within the office glanced up at this interruption with a mild look of curiosity, "Why should I care about the death of our pretty little assassin?" he asked.

The guards paused in their preparation to throw the woman out and she sighed in relief. "Because you're funding research into bio-engineering your own army of mutant warriors."

"You sound very sure of that," the man said.

"My employer is aware of every project dealing with the creation and manipulation of mutant DNA on the planet," Mindy said. "Boudreaux's child has enormous potential, you have no idea of what you're letting slip through your fingers if she dies without delivering that baby."

"And you tell me this out of the generosity of your spirit and a heartfelt desire to forward my team's efforts?" the man asked with a snort.

"Hell no," she replied. "I've been watching Boudreaux since her pregnancy was discovered. My employer fully intended to claim the child for himself when the time was right, but I don't want the girl and baby dying on my watch. I might survive loosing the kid to your people, but killing me would be the least that he'd do if this baby isn't born."

****** ****** ******

"Yo' sure yo're up to dis?" Henri asked giving his cousin an uncertain look.

Remy never looked away from the building where their target was secured. "Oui," he said shortly.

"It don' have to be tonight," Henri continued. " 'M not tryin' to tell yo' what to do, mais I've seen de jails in dis place an' I know I don' want to see dem from de inside."

"Please Henri, I jus' need to keep busy. I t'ink 'bout it or talk 'bout it I t'ink I'll go crazy. Jus' let me focus, everyt'ing be fine," Remy said letting the faintest traces of his empathetic abilities creep into his tone.

"If yo're shor," Henri said handing Remy a hard drive they'd infected with a particularly distructive virus the day before.

They'd already broken into the offices once to learn what sort of computer the information was stored on, tonight they'd pull the switch and with any luck the owner of the computer in question would never even know he'd been robbed.

"S' what are we hopin' to find?" Remy whispered finding that the repetitive nature of the break-in kept it from being as much of a distraction as he might have liked.

"Client lists," Henri said shortly. Seeing Remy's pleading expression he elaborated. "Dere are people who t'ink dese hommes be in de weapons trade, de nasty, 'xtremely illegal end of it too. Certain parties, mos'ly government be willin' to pay good money to know who dey be sellin' to, 'specially if no one finds out dey been made 'till after de bust."

"Don' dey have deir own people to do dis?" Remy asked.

" 'Course dey do, mais not as good as us, no one's as good as de Guild, an' since dey broke off from de ole Soviet Union dis bunch even be willin' to admit it," Henri explained in a low voice as they entered the office and set to dismantling in the computer. "Dey need dis info fas', 'fore some of deir neighbors take it into deir head to deal wit' dis little problem demselves. Looks bad for a sovereign state to not be able to tend to it's own dirty laundry."

Remy switched the hard drives. "An' if dey're dis hard up, yo' shor dey can pay?"

"Oui, Thereon checked deir 'ccounts 'fore we took de job." Henri said watching the hall. "Quiet now."

Remy slid under the desk as Henri moved to stand behind the door. A guard shown a flash-light around the room in a perfunctionary manner, trusting the dog at his side to warn him if anything were wrong, then continued complacently on his rounds.

"Plannin' is everyt'ing," Henri said a minute later sounding smug.

"Tante Mattie's potion really worked," Remy said, sound a touch disbelieving. "De dog still don' smell a t'ing."

"I tol' yo' so," Henri replied. "Come on, after dis job all we got is a few contacts I should introduce yo' to while we're in Europe, den we'll head home."

****** ****** ******

Belle stared at the low ceiling of her cell. Her lips were cracked and bleeding. Her skin was flushed with fever. Her broken ribs sent spikes of pain through her with every shallow breath she drew. Her limbs felt weak. Her bruises ached. Her cuts burned with infection and she worried about the deep pains that could indicate more serious injuries.

She knew she should be looking for a means to escape but it took all her strength just to drag her battered body to the door to retrieve the brackish, luke-warm water her jailor brought, the food she couldn't even bring herself to look at.

She wondered if Remy would mourn her when he realized she was dead. Belle didn't think it was likely. Chances were he'd push her memory down in the depths of his mind to keep his dead X-Man friend company.

The door creaked open and Belle tried to summon some worry over the thought that her captures must have gotten tired of waiting for her to die on her own and had come to execute her.

"Get some light in here," a man's voice demanded brusquestly. "I need to examine her before we try to move her."

Belle cringed away from the sudden brightness as a floodlight was brought in to illuminate her cell.

She snarled and swatted ineffectually at the doctor's hands as he unbuttoned her shirt. "Leave me 'lone!" she growled.

"Hold her still," the doctor ordered. One of the guards grabbed Belle's hands and stretched them above her head while a second held her legs to keep her from kicking.

Clinically the doctor probed the various bruises, gashes and swellings that dotted Belle's torso ignoring her indignant curses. "Broken ribs, concussion, internal bleeding, her wounds are infected and she's picked up some sort of virus in this pit," he reported turning toward a figure in the door. "Your men did quite a job on her. She'll survive, but I need to get her to the lab to ascertain the fetus' condition."

A stretcher was brought in the guards transferred Belle to it, as they moved to secure her, Belle managed to bury her teeth in one of the men's hands and ripped a chunk of flesh out when he jerked away from her.

"Don't!" the doctor yelled as the man pulled back a fist. The guard ignored him and punched Belle. She was unconscious when they hauled her to the helicopter, a new welt forming on her cheek, blood that wasn't hers running down her chin and a smile on her face.

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