Alright, WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH FF.NET? Every time I upload something, all the apostrophes and quotation marks get replaced with little symbols. Since I really cant write without them, I guess you'll just have to work it out. Wait, I could change it to British style. That would certainly help. Ok – means that someone is talking, like quote marks. Thank God I read Trainspotting or I would have never thought this up.

Anyway, this is the chapter a lot of you have been waiting for, but don't worry; the story is not almost over or anything. As I mentioned before, it's 12 chapters long. And almost completely finished.

Thank you so much for the reviews everyone! I've almost beaten my record of 34 reviews! Miracle Chick, do you think maybe you're getting too emotionally involved in this? Just kidding, as far as I'm concerned, you wanting to curl up and die means that I'm doing a good job of making my story genuinely sad. Just don't die yet. Still a lot of story to go, and you're my favorite reviewer!

On with the show!

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The food wasn't coming as often.

At first Lance had thought it was simply his imagination playing tricks on him. But no, they had received exactly six meals through the little slot in the door since the day Todd taken his last trip down the hall, and it had certainly been more than three days. Perhaps six. That meant that they were down to one meal a day. This wouldn't be *too* much of a problem, except that they were getting *exactly* one meal a day, which had to be split between them.

A rather irritating side effect of Pietro's mutation was his constant need for food to support his super fast metabolism. Just like the way a hummingbird has to drink half its weight in nectar to keep its wings flapping, Pietro needed about twice the food of a normal human being. And not just any food he wanted, but *healthy* stuff. Lance could remember one day last year when Pietro blew up at him, saying he was sick and tired of Lance telling him what to eat and when. Lance, feeling a little indignant, had told him, -fine, do whatever you want!- That evening, Lance came home to find a half eaten McDonalds Quarter Pounder meal on the table, and Pietro, crashed on the couch, moaning that he felt like he was going to die.

Suddenly, this little mutation side effect wasn't just irritating; it was dangerous. Which is how Lance wound up sitting on the floor, legs sprawled out in front of him, struggling to get Pietro to eat something.

-Come on, man- he muttered, offering an apple slice. -You gotta be starving.-

There was no reply. Not that Lance was expecting one. Ever since Pietro had witnessed Todd's death, he had been completely silent. At the moment he sat propped up against the wall, staring off into space, his blue eyes cloudy and vacant. Lance waved a hand in front of Pietro's face. -Hey man. You awake?- No response.

Sighing, Lance put the apple back on the tray. Better save this for a time when Pietro was a little more lucid. Carefully, he lowered himself back onto his mat and shut his eyes, shielding them from the light. Sometimes it felt as if that light could bore itself into his brain and conduct a frontal lobotomy. Tiny little doctors, all wielding tiny little knives, slicing into his gray matter--- 'No', he chided himself. 'No, I have to stop this; I have to think normal thoughts.' But every day it was getting harder and harder to do so. Because all the time he was getting sicker, and now Pietro seemed to have a little case of it, whatever it was. And all of a sudden, Lance realized that he was talking to himself, sometimes holding one-way conversations with Pietro. He continued his counting, always picking up where he last left off. Last night, he hit 14,000. And all the time, he kept wondering when it might be Ok for him to just let go and die. With that thought in mind, Lance drifted off into an uneasy sleep.

He awoke suddenly an unknown amount of time later to the sounds of a weak struggle. -C'mon, hold his legs- a deep voice boomed. It was followed by the sound of panicked whimpering.

Startled, Lance turned his head to the side a little too quickly and winced at the dizzying sensation. Opening his eyes, he saw a small group of guards, maybe five, but it was hard to count with the room spinning like it was. All of them were huddled around Pietro, but none of them held automatics this time, only stun guns. All of them except one, that is.

In the hands of the head guard was a sledgehammer.

Somewhere in the far off corners of his brain, Lance thought that he should be worried about this, that something was very wrong. The working part of his mind, however, couldn't seem to process the situation. Every time it got close, the room would spin some more and things would become hazy and swimmy, and he would start to count again until it stopped.

-Ok, hold out his left leg- someone said.

-14,867; 14,868; 14,869--- Lance continued to listen to the struggle, though it sounded strangely muffled to him, and if his was listening through earplugs. Then suddenly there was the sound of a sharp crack, like someone breaking a pencil. It was followed by about two seconds of silence, and then a scream so shrill that even in his confused state, the hair on Lance's neck stood on end.

And then, before he could figure out what was happening, he was alone with Pietro again.

The younger boy had turned white as a sheet, and his leg was bent at an angle in a way that made Lance feel sick to his stomach again. The screaming had stopped, but he continued to whimper and sob, his silvery tears running into a puddle on the ground.

This all upset Lance, but for some reason, he couldn't understand why.

-14,888; 14,889; 14,890---

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-The X-jet is preparing to land. Please check your seatbelts and observe the no smoking sign. Thank you for flying Mutant Air.-

-Knock it off, Jean,- Scott said with a laugh.

In the Co-pilot seat, Logan didn't crack a smile. This mission was particularly serious to him, and he didn't like the kiddies making jokes. Just inside the Canadian border existed a building that was rumored to be a subset of SHIELD's mutant testing program. Supposedly, these were the guys who kidnap the mutants and weed out the strong from the weak through acts of torture. The strong were sent on to SHIELD for experimentation and government black ops missions. Those too weak or stupid were terminated. Logan tightened his fist. It was likely that he himself had been held in such a building before his memories were wiped clean, before his whole life had been stolen away from him. Tonight, he was out for blood.

The jet came to a bumpy landing in a forest clearing just under half a mile from the facility. Their objective: infiltrate and rescue any prisoners with as little blood as possible. Of course, that wasn't necessarily Logan's objective. If it were up to him, they would blow the whole building to bits. Professor Xavier told him that he should try to think a little lower profile.

-Alright- Cyclops said, switching into leader mode. -Jean, Wolverine, you come with me up on the roof to the point of infiltration, just like we talked about. Storm, you handle communications and emergency air escape from the jet. And Wolverine- he added, waving a finger in Logan's face, -remember, this is a *bloodless* operation.-

-Kid- Logan snarled, -If you don't get that finger out of my face, the only blood spilled will be yours.-

Scott quickly withdrew his finger. -Uh--- right. Anyway, is everyone ready? Let's go!-

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Major Mathew Jenkins was a terrible chess player.

It was an embarrassment. Most Majors were good at chess because it helps build strategy. Not to say that Jenkins was an inept strategist; on the contrary, he was good at what he did, and what he did was strategize. He was just sick of people beating him at chess.

So he spent some time each late night he worked at his computer practicing, loosing to the computer at a game he hated. But tonight it looked like he might actually win, and he was quite happy about it. –Come on, you bastard- he muttered as he took out the little black queen with his little white knight.

Unfortunately, at that moment three people in colorful costumes crashed in through the skylight in his office ceiling.

Before Jenkins even had time to piss himself, Wolverine had him shoved up against the wall, adamantium claws grazing his neck. -Where do ya keep the prisoners, bub?!- he snarled at the terrified man.

Jenkins opened and closed his mouth a few times, like a fish flapping around on a pier, before managing, -I- I- they're dead! It was a sorry group, no one graduated.-

-You're a liar!- He tossed the man forcefully to Cyclops. -Secure him. I'm going on a little hunt.-

Logan burst out of the small office into a metal hallway so bright he had to squint. So like other the places where he had been held captive. Just a small, one story building with a few hallways of cells. Logan drove his claws into the lock of the first door and kicked it open. Nothing. He moved on to the second door and repeated the action. Nothing. Logan grimaced. He just hoped that little military snot hadn't been telling the truth earlier.

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In a cell at the end of the last hallway, Lance had finally come to his senses. He couldn't explain how it worked, this odd little insanity of his, but at some point he looked at Pietro and just *understood*. The clouds in his brain had faded and he could see that his friend was in terrible pain.

At the moment he was curled up around the boy's shivering form, trying to share some body heat. –it's Ok, man. You're gonna be Ok.- Lance wiped a thin sheen of sweat away from his forehead. 'Pietro is going into shock, that must be the only explanation for the shivering and the teeth chattering, because it's as hot as the fires of hell in here,' Lance thought disjointedly. 'Or maybe I'm just running a fever.' His thoughts scattered, however, when Pietro, though it obviously pained him to do so, turned to Lance and started *talking*.

- I don't like this place, Lance. Too cold.-

Something in those two little sentences, so weakly delivered, struck Lance in a way that nothing ever had before. A look of pained realization came to his face, and for a moment, his lip protruded and his eyes clenched shut, but he managed to fight off the tears. This was too important.

-Pietro; if you need to let go of this place, just do it, Ok man? Don't worry about me, all right? I don't want to see you like this.-

Pietro did not reply. He had slipped out of consciousness.

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Logan was in a bit more of a hurry than he had been just a few minutes ago.

Part of the way through his search, he had run across two soldiers keeping guard, and--- well, his feral side took over. He couldn't help it, he could smell the *death* in all of those rooms, down all of these halls, it all reeked of the blood of the innocent, and it was infuriating him. When he saw those two guards, casually talking as if they hadn't killed just down the hall, Logan knew he had to see them pay. And he did. Repeatedly. So now it was only a matter of time before someone found their *almost* dead bodies and set off an alarm.

Last room. He hoped that Scott and Jean were having a little more luck locating hostages than he was. A quick slice to the lock and a well- placed kick, and the room was open.

When Logan saw the two lumps huddled together in the corner of the far side of the room, his first though was 'corpses'. But no- he could hear the bigger one breathing- and was that little one shivering?

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Lance heard the door open and the footsteps as someone entered the room. No. He could not take any more of this. Not now.

-Get the hell out,- Lance said with all the force he could muster. -Get out, he's already dying, just let him die in peace.-

Under his mask, Logan's face went limp with shock. He knew that voice. -Lance?- he asked, unable to believe it.

Lance used up the last of his energy turning his head. No one had ever addressed him by name in this place before. The sight of the orange clad man with the adamantium claws shooting out from his hands held for a moment before blurring. 'I must be hallucinating,' Lance thought, before he drifted off into unconsciousness.

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-Cyclops to Wolverine! Report back to the X-jet immediately!- Scott ordered into the X-link. -No prisoners found alive.- He put down his communicator and began pacing the cockpit again. Jean watched him silently. She knew that nothing was worse to Scott than a failed mission.

-Where *is* he?- Scott barked. He grabbed hold of the communicator. -Wolverine! Where are you?-

-Hey Scott, I think you should see this.- Jean was staring out the window into the forest.

-What? What is it?- he snapped, before joining her at the window. -Is that Logan? What's he got?-

Jean squinted her eyes at the hulking mutant trudging through the undergrowth with something swung over his back. -It looks like he's carrying someone.-

Scott strained his eyes. -No--- *two* someones.-

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Thoughts? Feelings? Who's happy about Lance and Pietro's change in luck?