Chapter 8: Robbery
Mr. Dare stared as Gilmore came storming in. "What happened?" he asked in surprise.
"That little bitch Amy got her memories unblocked by the mutants at the mansion next door," Gilmore snapped. "They know everything. They know about the robberies, and they know what I did to get Amy. They know I changed her name and they know I took her from her relatives. Xavier told me if I don't turn myself in to the authorities and disband the orphanage, he's going to tell them himself."
"Doesn't he realize if he tells anyone about us, the kids will go to prison?" Dare said in surprise.
""They've gotten Amy to believe it's an acceptable risk," Gilmore threw himself into an easy chair before the fireplace in the staff room and glowered into the fire. "She said she willing to if it means she gets away from us."
Greg Gilmore sat down beside him. "Dad, you're not going to give in, are you?" he whined, sounding, for the moment, more like a petulant child than the eighteen-year-old he really was. "You can't! You gotta get Amy back!"
"So you can play with her?" Gilmore snarled at his son. "What did you do to her, anyway? They said they'd found evidence that you were tampering with her mind when I didn't know about it. What did you do?"
"Nothing, Dad! Honest! Stefan and Chris and I were just…you know...picking on her…and we got a little carried away, I guess. We didn't want her to remember that we'd broken her legs, or her ribs, and stuff, and we did remember to tell you so she'd stay off the limbs till they healed."
Gilmore sat back heavily in his chair. "Boys will be boys, I guess," he said.
"So what are we going to do?" Fry asked.
Gilmore waved dismissively. "The other orphans can go back to their orphanages," he said. "The mutant kids are going to help us pull off the Manhattan Bank job, then we'll split the take and run. I'll kill the kids after we pull it off."
"What are we going to do about Amy?" Greg asked.
Gilmore stared broodingly into the fire. "I don't know," he said.
Scott and Jean were sitting in Xavier's study with him when there came a tap at the door. It opened, and Nate came in. "Hey," he said. "Am I interrupting anything?"
"No, you're not," Xavier said. "We were just discussing options. Please join us."
"Options?" Nathan said as he sat down in another chair.
"I found Amy's other grandparents," Xavier said gravely. "They died a year ago. I found their obituary in a Chicago paper."
"Oh, no," Nate groaned. "So she really doesn't have anyone left?"
"None that I could discover," Xavier said grimly. "Both her parents were only children, and I couldn't track down any siblings of her grandparents."
"What happens to her, then?" Nate asked. "She can't stay here forever, unless someone were to adopt her." He shot a meaningful glance to Jean.
She didn't miss the look. "Nate," she sighed, "I've been over this with Scott already. It's all very well to suggest we adopt her, but what do we do with her afterwards? Our lives as X-Men aren't the kind of stable, steady environment she needs to grow up in. She's had so much upheaval already, so many changes."
Nate gestured around him to the surrounding mansion. "Well, we're not going anywhere," he said. "The team may change, but there will always be X-Men here, at least for the foreseeable future. Charles will certainly be here for a while yet, if I have anything to say about it. She won't be lacking for anything if she's here. And really, Jean, how much different will it be having her around than it was having Jubilee? She could even go to the Massachusetts Academy if you think she needs to be with kids her own age."
Jean threw up her hands. "All right, all right! You guys win! I'll talk to Amy about it in the morning, okay? She might not want to stay here; what if she says no?"
Nate gave her a naughty sidelong look. "Jean, really," he said. "Do you honestly think she's going to say no?"
"No," Jean sighed. Then she giggled. "You'll have a bratty 'little sister' hanging around," she grinned. "So to speak. Are you ready to be a big brother?"
Nate groaned theatrically. "No, but if she says yes, then I'm going to have to learn real quick, aren't I?" He looked at Scott. "Are you ready to be a dad to a teenager?"
Scott grinned. "I leave it all up to Jean," he smiled. Jean punched him in the arm, and they all laughed.
Amy lay on her bed, staring at the ceiling. Her own room, her own bed, her own tiny bathroom. She hadn't had to share anything with anyone here except the shower with the other women here. She felt slightly awed, and kept pinching herself to see if she was dreaming. Surely any time now she'd wake up and find herself back in the girl's dorm in the orphanage!
Her thoughts wandered back to the conversation Xavier had had with her while they waited for Headmaster Gilmore to arrive. "You may stay as long as you like," he'd told her. "I am going to try to find your grandparents, but until I do you're welcome to stay as long as you like. You're not going to go back to the orphanage."
To be able to stay here! Amy smiled in delight and rolled over. To not have to worry about the bigger boys picking on her, not to have to sneak around to read…Mr. Xavier had told her he would show her to the library the next day. The thought of a library, a whole room full of books, was heaven to her, who had had only one book besides her lesson books to read from.
She sat up. Not going back to the orphanage meant she wouldn't be able to get her book back! She hadn't thought about that before now. She had to go back, otherwise she'd lose her book. And it wasn't so much the book as it was the letter she had hidden in the pages. She had to get that back. She really had to. It was the only relic she had of her parents; she didn't even have photographs.
She slid out of bed and dressed quietly in the jeans and shirt they'd found for her to wear. Jean had said that they could go shopping the next day for more clothes for her if she wanted to; it was a generous offer. Amy smiled as she slipped her feet into her loafers. She'd sneak in, get her book from where she'd hidden it, and slip back out. No one would know where she'd been.
She opened her bedroom door, looked out. The hall was quiet, the carpet silvered by moonlight lying across it from the large window at the end of the hall. Most of the lights in the rooms were out, though she did see a sliver of light coming from under a door at the end of the hall. Amy tiptoed quietly past the doors, descended the stairs quietly, and crept past the rec room, where she could see two people playing pool. A quick dash through the kitchen, a silent turning of the lock in the door, and she swung the door open, slipped out, and shut the door quietly.
The bright light of a nearly-full moon illuminated her way across the green lawns as she walked down toward the lake. She looked up at the stars, hanging brightly in the sky above her, and grinned. She paused by the lake, impulsively climbed onto the stargazing rock, and looked up at the bejeweled night sky above her. She knew why they called this the star-watching rock now; she could see so many stars from her perch on the rock. "Catch a falling star and put it in your pocket…" she sang softly, a phrase from some unknown tune she must have heard at one time or another and forgotten. A breeze riffled the surface of the lake, silvering it, and she grinned even as she shivered in the chill. She would have to hurry. It was getting cold.
She hurried around the perimeter of the lake and ran silently up the back lawn to the orphanage. The outside duty crew had done wonders with the lawns in the few days she'd been gone; she stared in surprise at the manicured grass, neatly edged flowerbeds, and pretty flowers planted neatly around the margins of the bushes. The siding had been repainted, the roof reshingled, windows replaced and their frames repaired. It almost looked cheerful now.
She sneaked across the lawn to the door leading into the cellar. She'd taken care to jimmy the lock on that door in such a way that if you shook the knob a certain way, it would open. To her great relief, it hadn't been fixed yet, and it swung open at her touch, creaking a bit. She froze for long minutes, waiting for some sign that anyone had heard and was coming to investigate. No one did.
She climbed the cellar stairs, avoiding all the creaky places from habit. She had used the cellar door to sneak out at night and bathe and drink from the lake, and she knew where all the creaky steps were. She got up the stairs, opened the door at the top of the stairs, and crept out into the kitchen.
Here too it looked different; white walls, tiles scrubbed clean, the floor gleaming from a new coat of wax. Dishes were stacked neatly on the counters, waiting for the kitchen crew to come back in the morning and make breakfast. She walked through the kitchen, out into the front rooms, and crept up the stairs to the girls' room.
Everything was still silent. Counting her blessings, she tiptoed down the row of beds to where hers was, and dropped to her knees at the foot of her bed. Digging her nails under the floorboards, she pried up the loose one she hid her book under, slipped her hand under it and felt for her book. The space was empty!
"Looking for this?" came a voice from behind her, and she whirled as the light in the dorm clicked on. All the girls sat up, blinking and rubbing their eyes.
Amy froze. Gilmore, Greg, and Mr. Fry stood behind her. Mr. Gilmore held her book.
"Give that back!" she cried desperately, jumping up and trying to snatch it from his hand.
He lashed out with one hand, striking her cheek, and she fell to the floor with a cry. Mr. Fry grabbed her arm, hauled her upright. Amy stumbled in his wake as she was dragged out of the room and down the hall to the staff rooms.
He shoved her into a chair as Gilmore dropped the book on the table. "So, the prodigal returns," he said. "Just in time, too. We can pull off the Manhattan bank heist tonight, and be in Acapulco tomorrow."
Amy tried to jump up, out of the chair, but Mr. Fry grabbed her hair and yanked backwards, pulling her back down. "I'm not helping you rob any more banks, Headmaster," she said. 'Do your own dirty work."
Gilmore opened the door to his bedroom and the other six mutant children walked in from where they were hiding. Stefan stopped in front of her, and she stiffened. Her new-found memories told her that he was the most brutal of the lot of them; he'd hurt her badly on several occasions. "Do you want to rethink that?" Gilmore said mildly.
"I'm through doing your dirty work for you," she snapped.
Stefan curled up his fist and drove it into her stomach. She gasped, doubling over as the wind was driven out of her. It took a few moments for her to recover. When she straightened up again, the fist plowed into her middle.
By the fifth blow she was seeing stars. Her body slid numbly out of the chair, and she curled up on the floor gasping. Stefan was on a roll now, and didn't want to stop. Amy's face swelled and bruised from his repeated kicks and punches, and she was crying weakly by the time Gilmore stopped him. "All right," she whimpered. "All right, I'll do it."
Greg Gilmore's smile was the last thing she saw before he slipped into her mind and knocked her out.
She awoke, tied to the chair, early the next morning. She was stiff, and her back hurt from sitting there so long, but they didn't care. Gilmore, Fry, and Dare assigned chores to the other orphans and then slipped upstairs. Amy tried to protest again as they untied her, but Greg sent a sharp spike of pain stabbing through her mind, and she stayed quiet, though her anger simmered.
She was silent as Gilmore, Fry, and another teacher, Mr. Dare, took them out the front door and loaded them into the back of the van. The boys chattered excitedly about the job they were going to do, but Amy sat silent. She hated this. She didn't want to do this. Why, oh why, had she left the safety of Mr. Xavier's home? Was her parents' letter really worth this?
They pulled up in the alley behind the bank, and Gilmore turned to them. "Okay," he said, you know what you have to do."
Greg closed his eyes, concentrated. "The bank isn't open yet," he said. "The bank president's in there with the vice president, and two tellers. And the security guard, but he's with us, isn't he? He's our insider?"
Gilmore nodded. "Is that all?"
Greg nodded.
"All right, good job. Stefan, you, Drew, and Lucas get going. Remember to hold hands, too! You don't want to get left behind!"
The three boys got out of the van and linked hands, then Stefan walked into the brick wall of the bank and the boys disappeared. Gilmore settled back into his seat, his eyes glued nervously to his watch.
Almost half an hour later, they walked back out of the wall, each carrying a giant sack bulging at the seams with bills. Amy pressed her lips together, biting back the cry that wanted to escape her throat. She wanted to scream, They're here! But no one would hear her this early in the morning anyway. Anger simmered in her mind, and her eyes and hands began to glow faintly in the darkness of the back of the van. Greg kept sending little spikes of mental pain into her brain, and that distracted her from the fact that deep inside her, her fury had woken the flames that slumbered inside her.
Fry opened the back door of the van and the three boys climbed in, still holding hands. As soon as they were in, though, Lucas dropped his sack with a groan, and the other two boys suddenly found their loads too heavy for them to lift. Sweat popped out all over Luke's brow at the effort of shifting the mass of roughly a million dollars in the bags the two boys had carried. "Okay," Gilmore cheered, clapping his son on the back. "Any sign that anybody knows something's wrong?"
Greg concentrated again. "Nope. They won't know the money's gone until they go to the vault to refill their tills. And that will be never."
Gilmore pulled the van out of the alley at a leisurely pace, not bothering with haste or speed, since no one was there to watch them anyway. A block down, he stopped the van and pulled over. "Now," he said to Amy, "Use your flames to set fire to the bank."
Amy stared, horrified. She couldn't…she couldn't! and in her mind flashed the memory of the last job they'd pulled, Gilmore had wanted her to set fire to the bank. She'd refused. Greg had taken control of her mind and forced her to…
Just like he was doing now. Amy's mind put up a feeble, angered resistance, but she didn't really know how to adequately shield against a telepathic assault. Greg slipped in control of her body easily, brought her hands up as she watched him use her helplessly, and called up the fire in her.
Amy had always envisioned her power rather as being like a great fiery dragon that slept inside her, curled up until she was ready to use it. Now Greg prodded at the dragon, rousing it, and took control of it through Amy's mind. The dragon uncoiled on Amy's palm, a sinuous, writhing red, orange and gold shape that uncoiled and stretched out to its full length. Greg goaded it some more, and the dragon rose to its full height, some eight feet above the car, and at Greg's urging it spat a great gout of flame at the building.
Amy had always found it pecuiliar that her power could make anything burst into flame. Everything she'd ever practiced on, from simple gas-soaked scraps of cloth all the way down to rocks, she could make explode into flames. The brick of the bank building burst into flame obediently, and Amy listened to the screams of the people trapped inside as Greg held her under control.
The other boys in the van turned to slowly look at Gilmore and Greg, horror on their faces. They hadn't known about the plot to kill the occupants of the bank; they thought they were only going in to grab the money and run. "Hey, we didn't agree to this," Drew objected. "They're dying in there! We gotta go help them!" they all started to scramble out of the van, leaving Gilmore and Greg sitting in the front seat and Amy and Fry in the back with the bags of money.
Greg raised Amy's hand, and Amy screamed mentally in horror as the six boys burst into flame. They didn't even have time to scream; they died right there, instantly. She beat against the overwhelming presence of Greg in her mind, but was ineffective as Gilmore shut the doors and drove away from the six small bonfires lying in the middle of the street.