Chapter 25: Unexpected Ally
The darkness was inviting; the smell, Logan realized after a moment, wasn't. There had been a lot of homeless squatters here at one time, and the floor was littered with garbage as well as the remnants of metal factory equipment, now just massive, rusting hulks sitting on the floors. He heard Pierce's enraged shout, heard the sound of another voice, quieter and more indistinct, as the telepath who had been hiding in the alley's shadows said something back to Pierce. He gritted his teeth, fought the instinct to gag, and dove further into the darkness, feeling Jubilee's weight in his arms. He would find somewhere in here to hide her and then he'd return and pound Pierce to a pulp…
He stopped in front of what his nose told him was a foul, malodorous pile of garbage, and felt around in the darkness with his foot, clearing a space in the middle of the garbage. Even with his enhanced vision, it was visible only as a larger smudge on the floor; the darkness here was so absolute that he could barely see. It would be impossible for anyone to find Jubilee with normal senses; and the heat being given off by the microorganisms and bacteria in the pile of rotting garbage would help hide Jubilee's own faint body heat from infrared sensors; not that there was much of it, he could feel her body going cold with shock. There wasn't really anything he could do about that; he could hear Hank's measured tones in his mind saying that she basically needed to be kept warm. The garbage, while it didn't smell good, would do that.
She'd gotten hit with a much longer dose of electricity than he had; he'd been exposed to a few seconds. Jubilee had been subjected to at least a half-minute, if not more; courtesy of Pierce's innate sadistic tendencies. Logan laid Jubilee in the pile of garbage, carefully covering her with the rubbish, and then silently moved in the opposite direction. Pierce's eyes had been replaced with cybernetic units, and if it should be scanning the interior of the warehouse with heat sensors, he didn't want Pierce to connect Logan with the faint heat signature coming from the pile of garbage.
He attacked them from the opposite direction of the pile Jubilee was hidden in; springing on Pierce and the telepath, who, he now saw in the dim light from the streetlamp outside the door, was a thin, sullen-faced, wispy little man. He roared as he rushed them, claws springing out…
Pierce morphed his arms into those adamantium tentacles again, catching Logan's wrists with them. The telepath reached out at the same time and froze Logan again, and then that damn electricity arced into his arms. Logan screamed as his vision filled with blue sparks, that went on and on and on…until he slid into blackness. His last thought was of Jubilee; hoping they wouldn't find her, hoping she would escape.
Jubilee stirred, moaned.
Her entire body hurt, and she was lying on something so hard it hurt her back. As she tried to roll over, every muscle in her body protested so much she cried out involuntarily.
"Hey," said a calm, comforting voice. "Just move slowly, you'll be all right in a few minutes."
Jubilee jumped about a foot in the air. 'Who's there? Wolvie?" she asked, doubtfully. That didn't sound like Wolvie.
"Nope, sorry to disappoint you," said that voice again. Male, she decided. And young. The voice sounded somewhat familiar, she'd heard it before… "This is your friendly neighborhood…"
"Spider-Man!" Jubilee sat bolt upright, ignoring the protesting twinge in her muscles and back. "What are you doing here?"
"Saw all the activity over here, decided to check it out," said the voice. It was too dark for Jubilee to see clearly, but she could well imagine the familiar red and black web-masked face that went along with that voice. "Those goons left, complaining that they hadn't found who the 'boss' was looking for…and I decided to check it out. Saw you lying here in this garbage, figured I'd find out what happened."
"Wolvie…we were just cruising…and Pierce stopped us, knocked out the systems in our bikes with a burst of electric, and attacked us. Wolvie was just getting into it when he just stopped, and his eyes got all funny, and he grabbed me while Pierce electrocuted me…" She shuddered at the memory of the horrible pain. "It just kept going…I passed out…and now you're here."
"You got electrocuted? And survived? Whoa." A hand touched her arm. "I'd better get you to the hospital, then, miss. You need to get checked out, to see if you're okay."
"No!" With difficulty, Jubilee struggled to her shaky legs. 'I have to find Logan. I have to get him away. Help me, Spider-Man." She swallowed. "Peter."
"Hey. How do you know who I am?" The hand on her arm took a firmer grip and steered her out of the darkness and toward an open door at the far end of the warehouse. As soon as they stepped out, she heard Spider-Man suck in a breath.
"Jubilee. Of the X-Men." Jubilee smiled crookedly. "We've never formally met, but I've seen you at night, sometimes. And I've heard of you."
"I've heard of you, too," Peter Parker said. "People think you and Wolverine make quite the team. But you've grown!" he exclaimed, looking at her with an expression of admiration under his mask. "Last time I saw you with Wolverine, you were…" he stopped abruptly.
"Yeah," Jubilee smiled weakly. "I was a lot younger…and I smelled better," she said. "Thank you…for waking me up." She mounted her bike on shaky legs. "I should get back to the mansion, let everybody know what happened."
The mansion was quiet when she pulled up in front on her bike. The ride back had cleared her head a little, and she wasn't shaking quite so badly.
She ran into the house and slapped the intercom button "Scott!" She cried into it, not caring that everyone else would hear it. "Scramble a team, Wolvie and I were ambushed in an alley by Pierce, and he knocked me out and took him…"
She had hardly finished speaking when there was a clatter on the stairs, and Scott stood there in boxers, with Emma dressed in white lingerie beside him. Emma almost immediately wrinkled her nose. "Jubilee. You smell like garbage," she said.
Jubilee rolled her eyes but refrained from comment. "Come on. There's no time to lose. Pierce kidnapped Logan, we have to go get him!"
She started toward the lower levels, but Emma stopped her. "Wait a minute. Do we know where he is?"
Jubilee rolled her eyes again, in frustration. "This is Pierce we're talking about. He's gonna be at the Hellfire Club. Where else?" She clenched her fists. "Come, on, what are you waiting for?"
Scott shook his head as he started to descend the stairs. "Jubilee, we don't know where he's been taken. He may not be at the Hellfire Club; he could be anywhere in the city by now. We need to sit, to think this out and plan it…"
"To hell with all that!" Jubilee cried, tears springing to her eyes. "Wolvie's in trouble, I know where he is, let's go get him!"
"We need to plan." Scott insisted. "Emma, call the others, please? Ask them to gather in the War Room downstairs in ten minutes."
Emma sent out the telepathic call, but Jubilee, frustrated and angry, sped up the stairs past her. She fairly flew down the hall to her room, where she stripped off her filthy clothes, bundled herself into her black and red bodysuit, and ran out of her room…just as Scott and Emma were coming back up the stairs to get dressed. "Young lady, where do you think you're going?" Emma demanded sharply.
"I'm going to rescue Wolvie," Jubilee's chin rose defiantly.
"No you're not. Not on your own. It's too dangerous, you'll get hurt. Wait for us." Scott ordered.
Jubilee stared at them in disdain and contempt. "You want us to stop, and wait, and plan, and waste time when Pierce is out there possibly crucifying Logan again," Jubilee snapped. "Nuh-uh. Sorry. Not going to happen. If you're not going to leave with me now, I'm going alone."
"Jubilee, no," Emma's eyes went briefly unfocused. Jubilee felt the unmistakable sensation of a telepathic tendril entering her mind, and ruthlessly slammed down her barriers to it.
It was something they'd never, even Charles, been able to explain. If Jubilee was actively fighting it off, no one's telepathic probe could get through. When the X-Men had gone into hiding in Australia, Betsy had scanned the base for any other psychic signatures that would reveal the presence of anyone other than the X-Men in the base. She had found none, even though Jubilee had been there. Since then, Jubilee had discovered that she could evade most telepathic probes (the sole exception being Jean or Charles at their fullest strength). As far as she knew, no one else could pick her up. And Emma, even with regular usage as a member of the team, had never been able to pick Jubilee up. Not even during all those times when Jubilee had snuck off the Academy grounds without permission. Emma had never caught her.
She slammed those doors in her mind now, and gave Emma a look that could only be described as 'nasty'. "Don't play with my head, Frosty," she said icily, coldly. "You're not going to stop me from going to get Logan." Her blue eyes, sparking with anger, pinned Scott with an angry glare. "You either."
"Jubilee, you can't go running off like this! You did all those impulsive things when you were younger; when will you grow up?!" Scott said, exasperated.
Jubilee lost her temper. "In case you haven't noticed, I am grown," she said, her eyes glittering. "While you were busy using her to get Jean off your mind, I was growing up. And Logan was helping. He's always been there for me, except when it was unavoidable; he loves me, like no one else here does. He lets me be myself, he doesn't expect me to be cold and controlled and stiff all the time. He accepts me for who I am, he trained me so that my strengths work with my powers. It's more than Frosty's ever done." She jerked her chin at Emma. "Or you. You cut me from the teams, sending me to live with Aunt Hope. Because of you not caring, I ended up in LA captured by the Church and tortured before they dropped me on the front lawn dead. When Warren's healing factor brought me back you all pretended like I wasn't here, that I was invisible and I didn't matter." Tears pricked her eyes. "Logan's the only one who really wanted me to talk, the only one who let me get everything off my chest. He's everything to me, he cares, and you don't. Get out of my way."
"Don't give me orders—" Scott started to say.
Jubilee had enough. Several glittering lines of her plasmoids appeared in the hallway in front of her at a wave of her hand; with another slight gesture, the glowing rainbow bands wrapped themselves around Scott and Emma, and pulled them back against the walls, clearing the hall for Jubilee's exit. As soon as the gap was sufficient, Jubilee was squeezing past, hurrying past them and down the hall, out the front door, and to her bike. Her face set and cold, she got on, pulled her helmet on, revved the engine up, and sped away.
She pushed her bike as fast as it would go, getting to the city in record time. She took the road downtown, and parked a block or so from the Hellfire club, then sprinted the short distance to the corner, where she could watch the entrance, study the building, and figure out how to get in. And once she did get in, how was she going to find Logan?
"He's still in there," came a voice behind her, and she spun, dropping into a fighter's crouch before she fully recognized the voice.
"Hey." She nodded to Spider-Man and retuned to her study of the building. "If you're going to tell me this is stupid and not to go in, save your breath," she said acidly. "Tweedledumb and Tweedledumber back at the mansion already gave me an earful."
Spider-Man dropped from his web strand to the sidewalk beside her and held his hands up in a gesture of surrender. "I learned a long time ago not to get in a woman's way when she's determined," he said. Jubilee looked at him sharply, wondering if he was being flippant, but his inscrutable masked face looked back at her unflinchingly. And she had other things to worry about now, too. "What I did want to tell you is that during one of those brief times when the Club was disbanded, I used the building for a hideout. There is a way in up on the roof they haven't found yet. And the security cameras in the vent shaft are fixed; they won't see anything but empty shaft."
Jubilee turned to look at him. "You'll take me up there." It wasn't a question. Her plans had just clarified.
"Yes, I'll take you up there." He raised his hand, and a strand of webbing shot from his hand to the side of a building beside the Hellfire Club. As soon as he was sure the webbing was secure, he wrapped an arm around her waist and pushed off. "Going up!" he said.
Jubilee sucked in a breath. It wasn't the first time she'd found herself without solid ground under her feet, but traveling by Webslinger Express wasn't the same as being picked up by Rogue or Ororo or Warren. She was slightly breathless when he dropped her off on the roof of the Hellfire Club. "So…what's our plan?" he asked when she stood on her own two feet again.
"I am going in alone." Jubilee emphasized the I. "You'll stay here and keep an eye out for the X-Men. Not that I'm expecting them to come anytime before the next millennium," she snorted sarcastically, "But Cyke might surprise me by taking his thumb out of his mouth and seizing the initiative." Her tone indicated just how doubtful she was about that happening.
"Is that wise?" Peter asked. "Going in there alone, I mean."
Jubilee blew out her breath. "I'm going to work my way into the heart of the club. Then I'll let myself be caught. They're going to want to know how I got in, and or course Pierce will want to gloat and parade my capture in front of Logan. So he'll take me to wherever he's holding Logan…and I'll release him and we'll escape together."
"Huh." Peter didn't sound optimistic about her plan's chances for success, but he knew better than to say it in front of Jubilee. "Well, good luck."
Just as she ducked into the narrow tunnel leading to the roof vent, he heard her say, "Thanks, Peter."