Star-of-Chaos: hee hee, glad you liked it. Yeah Quickedit has annoyed me by not accepting some of my favourite forms of punctuation. I'm glad I'm not alone in hating it!
Ishandahalf: ooh just wait! All is revealed in this very chapter about the body and all that jazz, I hope you won't be disappointed; I'm always worried I'll disappoint...
Willa. J: I'm glad you like it. Thanks for taking the time to review-I greatly appreciate it!
Misa1124: well there's a little more infiltration here I guess, so I hope that makes up for it. Thanks for the review!
Enchantedlight: well you needn't wait any longer ;-)
MorriganFearn: aww of course I know it's you! Who else would take the time to write me such a nice long review? And what a lovely review it was too! I don't think I've ever had as many nice things said as that! Many thank you's. Yeah I've left out Evan mainly because I don't know all that much about him so it would be kinda hard to write him believably. Bobby's alright really, you just have to completely forget what he was like in the movie ;-). Yep, Chris is the real life Cupid! He's been very encouraging with my writing (even though he doesn't watch x-men and has no clue who I'm talking about!). He says thank you for the awesomeness and tells me to tell you that "you're an awesome possum yourself babe!" that's just Chris for you... I'm looking forward to your "Wait until Dark" parody, I shall be looking out for it! I'm sorry to say though, I can't remember if there's any more stormyness in the story, but keep your fingers crossed anyway! Again, thanks for the lovely encouraging comments and the kudos!
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One More Star in the Sky
Chapter Fourteen (In which what once was lost, now is found...)
Jean and Kitty tried their best to re-trace their steps from their last visit to this place. Underground however, this place was huge. There were secret passages that lead everywhere and rooms barely anybody knew about, if they had ever thought that this would be a quick, easy task, they would have very wrong indeed.
Now it seemed like they were just walking round and round in circles, finding nothing but empty rooms, dust and old equipment as they went.
"Didn't we like, pass that and hour ago?" Kitty asked, pointing at an old chair. Jean gritted her teeth in annoyance, it had to be the hundredth time Kitty had said something like that.
This place gave them both the creeps. The air was cold and stale and the whole place felt like death. Jean wasn't sure whether it was worse this time or last time. Last time, it was deserted but everything was still there and in full working order, she could still pick up the faint telepathic imprints left by the mutants that had been tortured here, experimented on, and died. This time however, she could pick up no such signals, but the place was far more run down, thick dust and grim covering pretty much everything. It was depressing.
Jean pressed a couple of buttons on her communicator.
"Scott? Are you there?" she spoke into it.
"Jean?" a muffled voice asked back.
"Yeah its me, where are you? Have you found anything?"
"I don't know where we are, every corridor looks the same," he told her honestly, "And we haven't found anything useful, how about you two?"
"We don't know where we are either, how are we ever going to find a way out if we have no idea where "out" is?" she asked him, slightly exasperated.
"I don't know, but just keep looking, I'm sure we'll find a way, good luck Jean."
And with that, he signed off, leaving Jean no better off than before.
"So like, what are we going to do now?" Kitty asked.
"Just keep going I guess," was the answer she was given before Jean carried on down the corridor.
"Hey! Wait for me!" Kitty exclaimed before chasing after her.
-o-o-o-o-
The drain as it turned out, had several potential ways out.
"Is it zis one?" Kurt asked again. He had done this at every single drain grate that had come along.
"Non, jus' wait mon ami, Remy knows where he's goin'." Remy really did. He was one of the very few people who had actually memorised the blue prints. It hadn't been hard, memorising things like that had been a basic part of his thieves training and now it was coming in very handy indeed.
Finally, after what seemed like years, Remy stopped and began messing around with the grate overhead. It wasn't long before he had removed the iron cover. Hoisting himself out, whilst Kurt merely teleported, he looked around him. If he was correct, they should be right in the middle of the bases lower level.
"Ah really don't lahke this place."
Remy whipped around to find Rogue standing behind him, hugging herself.
"For dat I don' blame y' chérie," he reassured her, moving closer to her for his own comfort as well as hers.
"Its jus' weird is all, comin' back ta tha place ya died..."
"Well, Remy can't say he knows how y' feel dats f' sure."
"Remy!" Kurt cut through, causing both southerners to turn and face him. "Ve should start looking."
"Do y' recognise any o' dis chére?" Remy asked her as all three of them started to walk down the corridor. Kurt looked at him very strangely. They had all seen Remy seemingly talking to himself before, but it was still an odd thing to watch. He took it for granted though, that Rogue had joined their search party.
"Not really, Ah was unconscious most o' tha tahme..."
They carried on walking down different corridors that all looked the same, peering into rooms as they went until Rogue stopped dead in her tracks.
"There! Ah recognise that room! I think Ah was kept here foah a bit!"
It was a small ward with several gurney style beds, complete with restraints, and not much else in it. There was nothing useful.
"Were y' taken anywhere near here chére?" Remy asked her urgently, trying to force her to remember.
"Yeah, Ah think so anyway."
She carried on a little way down the corridor, before reaching another room, gently pushing the door open. This room proved a lot more fruitful. It was a small office, the only one they had seen so far and amazingly, it wasn't covered in dust of any kind.
There was a desk near the door, with filling cabinets opposite. Kurt took the cabinets whilst Remy made for the desk. This room seemed very out of place in Trasks base. It seemed...lived in, unlike all the other rooms which had once been sterilised and ultimately abandoned, this looked like it hadn't been left quite as long as the others.
On the desk, there was a small, angle-poise lamp, still functional, Remy switched it on, lighting up the dark room. He sat on the swivelly chair and made his way through all the desk draws, finding nothing but surplus stationary and other office equipment. The very bottom draw however, was locked, but Remy quickly picked it open.
Inside was an A4 beige folder, with TEST SUBJECT 826 stamped across the front in severe, black letters. He quickly opened it and gasped very quietly when he found Rogues photo staring back at him. It was a small, Polaroid shot that must have been taken very shortly after she had ended up here. She had a bruise near her right eye and was glaring murderously at the camera. If this had been under different circumstances and she didn't have the bruise, Remy would have laughed.
There was a whole file, albeit a thin one, on Rogue or test subject 826, as she was affectionately known round here. It listed her as an "unknown mutant" female with deadly skin and distinguishing white hair. It also had a list of the various tests that had been run on her. It was incredibly distressing to look at. Seemingly, she hadn't been given anything that would have been permanently damaging to her body, but they had extracted large amounts of blood and tissue for "genetic purposes." Remy shuddered and closed the file. There were about five more in the draw along with Rogues, more mutants whose lives had ended here, but there was no one he recognised.
He was about to show Kurt and Rogue what he had just found when he noticed something else. By the lamp there was a purpley-blue mug, half filled with coffee. Remy put his hand around the mug; it was still warm.
'Merde' he though, 'someone mus' still be here!"
"Kurt!" he called across the room, making the elf snap around.
"I found a file on Rogue, bu' we gotta get out now! Someone still works here, dere gonna come back soon o' later!"
Kurt needed no more warning. He shut the cabinet and him and Remy were about to make for the door when a middle-aged man, with glasses and a faded white lab coat entered. He looked shocked, but before he could stop them, Kurt reached for Remy's hand to teleport them both away. However before they could go, the man slammed his hand down on a blue button on the wall, Kurt was stuck, he couldn't teleport.
"M-mutant dampening field," the man stuttered, closing the door behind him. Despite the fact he looked a little shaken, he wasn't afraid of the two demonic creatures that were stood in front of him.
"What are you doing here? How did you get in?" he suddenly demanded, growing a lot bolder.
Remy held up his hands, "We're jus' lookin' fo' somet'in importan' to us homme, an' as fo' de gettin' in part, we could ask y' de same question, dis place shut up like a prison..."
The man looked slightly curious. It had become apparent that these two young men didn't want to cause him any harm or damage to the base, but he did want to know what it was they were after.
"Did you verk here?" the blue one suddenly asked him. He nodded in response.
"I still do some work here, unofficially. I have some...business here that I like to check up on."
Remy looked at the man, obviously weighing up his options.
"Do y' recognise her?" he asked, holding up the picture from Rogues file. Kurt elbowed him in the chest; evidently he didn't think this was a good idea.
"Yes, yes I do..." the man said, shaky hands taking the photo, "Very sad..." he trailed off, genuine emotion in his voice.
"Vhat! Tell us everything you know!" Kurt was getting a little over excited for Remy's liking, he pulled his tail to shut him up. The man gestured for Kurt and Remy to pull up a chair, which they gratefully did.
"My name is Doctor John Hunter, several months ago I worked here for a man named Trask. He wanted me to head a project he had masterminded. He told me it was merely looking into the genetics of mutants, I was fascinated with the subject and so of course I agreed." Remy and Kurt exchanged looks.
"I didn't know how much he hated mutants, I didn't know that, instead of doing more research into the X gene, he was hoping to develop something to kill mutants, using their own genes as a weapon against them. Thank God he was forced to stop before we made any real progress." Dr Hunter stopped and wiped his brow in a nervous way before continuing.
"The girl, 826, was one of the last we brought in. She was one of a group, four I think, but they were split up, the others being sent to different bases. We had only just started testing when Trask came in, yelling as usual, he wanted me to kill her, "terminating the project" he called it..." Hunter scoffed slightly.
"I refused. The only reason I was still carrying out tests for him was because I was bound in by a contract before I realised what the real plan was and then it was too late. This girl, she was so young, barely more than a child, it wasn't right...when I put my foot down, refused to do it; he kicked me off the project. He kept me working here though; I suppose it was dangerous to kick me out completely when I could have so easily exposed him. There's been a cover up now, no one would believe me if I told them..."
Remy looked over his shoulder to see Rogue. She was considerably paler and tearier than she was before. She remembered this man, he was the kindest of all the doctors she had met, always making sure that she had enough food and painkillers to keep her comfortable, none of this was his fault.
"Do you know vat happened to her after that?" Kurt asked, leaning forward on his chair.
"After that, Trask left the base entirely, nobodies seen him since. Me and the other two doctors present at the time made the decision that this shouldn't be the complete end of her life. As well as being interested in genetics, I'm also fairly knowledgeable on the subject on cryogenics. We decided to steal her body and freeze it so that one day she might be able to live her life again, we had already tried with a couple of the others, but we were always caught, we only got away with it that time because people were busy vacating the base. Its still here in the lab, I come in once a week or so to check up on her, you can never be to sure who'll get into an abandoned building..."
"Its here? Can you show us?" asked Remy urgently.
"Of course, its right down the hall," the doctor told him, getting up to lead the way, though not before switching off the dampening field.
Rogue lagged behind the group, taking all this in. She didn't think her body would even be intact, let alone cryogenically frozen...that meant there was a chance for her yet. Suddenly though, she found herself with mixed feelings. Even though she was no longer alive, heaven was a lovely place, her head wasn't crammed with other people's memories, she could hear her own thoughts for the first time in ages and she didn't have her poison skin. Would things really be better if she were alive again?
So Rogue is still intact! Maybe a happy ending is a little bit closer? I think I've dug myself into a real hole by using the concept of cryogenics. I'm not a scientist in any way, shape or form and so this kinda thing doesn't come naturally to me. I've done research though, promise, so some of it might make sense!
And who remembers Dr. Hunter? Check back to chapter 1 if you don't! Just a lil blast from the past there...
Please please please please review! It would truly make my day :-)