It was exactly 8:15 when Rogue woke up the next morning. The first thing she noticed was that she was actually in a bed, not waking up on the ground as she had for years and years. She was in a building instead of a deserted alley somewhere. No complaint there.
She rubbed her eyes wiping the last of sleep out of her eyes. As usual, she'd had nightmares. The same ones she always had; nightmares about the different people she had absorbed. Ever since her powers bloomed at the tender age of 11, she'd had memories and thoughts that she didn't even remember. This time, the dreams were from the thug that she had touched the previous day. He seemed to have an outstanding phobia of jail.
"Good morning." Rogue looked up to see Mystique leaning into the doorway of her room. Her room. the feeling of just bein able to say that made Rogue smile almost involuntarily.
"Hello Raven," she said, sitting up. She looked around at the posters on the blue walls, the carpeted floor, the television, the closet. "Thank you," she added.
"Excuse me."
Rogue sighed. "Thank you for giving me a place to sleep and being so kind to me."
"My pleasure. Breakfast is downstairs in the kitchen. Do you want to join us?"
"Us?" Rogue asked.
Raven slapped herself on the forehead. "That's right, I forgot to introduce you to the Acolytes. Come with me and you can meet them."
Rogue stepped out of bed, her street clothes that she had slept in feeling very stiff.
She followed Raven down the staircase and into the kitchen. Pouring some milk was a skinny kid with silver hair. At the table was a very fat guy eating hoagies, an intense looking guy with long brown hair, and a short guy with green hair and who was trying to catch a fly with his extremely elongated tongue.
Raven cleared her throat, granting her and Rogue an instant audience. "Todd, Pietro, Freddy, Lance..." she began, "this is Rogue, a possible future Acolyte."
Todd frowned. "What? Since when do the Acolytes let chicks in?"
Mystique sent him a glare. "I am a woman, Toad, or have you forgotten. Rogue is a perfectly capable mutant."
"What can you do, Rogue?" asked Lance.
Rogue looked questioningly at Raven who smiled.
"Lance," Raven commanded, "come here and shake Rogue's hand."
Lance stood up and started forward, making Rogue acutely aware that she did not have her gloves on.
"Go on Rogue It'll teach him a lesson."
Rogue outstretched her hand...and Lance took it.
Nothing happened.
"OK, what do I do now?" Lance asked in confusion. He wasn't the only one who was confused. Raven and Rogue were wondering why he hadn't keeled over unconscious. "Well?" Lance asked.
"I don't know," Rogue muttered. "Usually when I touch somebody, they-"
"Aggghh," Lanced yelled, cutting her off. He began to shudder and then keeled over, falling to his knees. He collapsed completely seconds later.
"Ah, I see," Raven was saying. "A delayed effect."
Meanwhile, the other Acolytes were speechless.
"I believe tht this 'chick,'" Raven addressed, "is more than capable, as Lance here will testify...when he wakes up that is."
"I've also got his powers," Rogue added. She stretched her hand to the right and then tightened it with the instinctive power that she had stolen from Lance.
The ground began to shake.
"Hey, that's Lance's power," Freddy exclaimed. "Way cool. Ya touch him and then 'poof' he's sleepin' like a baby and you can do the whole earthquake thing. You have to join."
Rogue made the mini-earthquake she had created cease and took a deep breath. "Join what? I mean, you guys, especially you Raven have been real nice to me and you've hinted off that I might be joining the Acolytes, but I don't know what it is you do. Do you work for the government? Are you like a Mutants Union? I don't get it."
Raven sighed and then picked Lance's limp form off of the ground, dropping him unceremoniously onto a couch in the adjoining room. When she returned, she ran a hand through the short, brown hair that was a part of her human morph. "Rogue, the Acolytes are a part of an...organization run by myself called the Brotherhood."
"Is it like a corporation?" Rogue asked.
"Yes." It wasn't exactly the truth but if Raven had told this impressionable girl that the Brotherhood was one of the biggest crime rings in the country; that she was pesonally behind most of the terrorism, assasination, theft, bribery, espionage, and other cime that plagued the US; Rogue would have been out of there in a heartbeat. Besides, Raven wasn't exactly known for her unwavering honesty.
"And you want me to join, right?" Rogue continued.
"Of course we do," Raven said, mustering as much sincerity as possible. "We can give a better life here."
"Yeah," Todd piped up.
Rogue hesitated for a moment. "OK," she said finally. "I'm in."
***
"I'm starting to notice a trend here," Remy was saying as he reported back to his superiors. "Every time I get a lead, its followed by dead bodies. This Eye of Death diamond is really living up to its name."
"Maybe some of the other interested parties are killing for it," Jean-Marc, the Thieves Guild operative he was reporting to suggested over the phone.
"No," Remy said into the mouthpiece. "These corpses I'm coming across are not shot or stabbed or anything. "They're missing hair, they have skin burns, and are blistered all over."
"Are they bleeding?"
"Well, I'm not looking at one of the bodies right now. I'm in a restaurant but yeah, one of 'em was bleeding from the nose and mouth. There were no indications that she had been assaulted though. Just blood."
Jean-Marc paused. "If I didn't know better Remy, I'd say that these people died from radiation poisoning."
"Radiation poisoning?! Jean Marc, that is crazy. Why would there be radiation in Queens?"
"I don't know, but the symptoms match. It looks like we have a much bigger problem mon ami."
"Yeah." Remy picked up a french fry and twirled it absentmindedly between his fingers. "But how is it connected with the Eye of Death?"
AN/ In case you haven't heard, Reviews make me write faster and they help me to know how to make future chapters better. Plz review./
