Chapter 26: The Hellfire Club
Jubilee paused and pressed her finger to her nose, trying desperately not to sneeze. To do so would alert the people in the room directly under her that she was there; and by her estimates, she was nowhere near the heart of the building yet.
There was the sound of a whip crack, and a breathless cry of pain. Jubilee peered down through the grille just in front of her, shaking her head at the sight of a slender brown-haired woman stretched out, shackled to an X-frame and being whipped. She couldn't understand why someone would want to put themselves in that position; bad enough that she herself had been on the receiving end of something like that involuntarily; why would someone want to do that deliberately? The sight of the whip and the sound of the woman's screams made her swallow hard as she remembered her own ordeal at the end of the Church of Humanity's whips. She turned away, fighting down the bile that rose in her throat. Don't get sick here, she admonished herself. Just focus on getting Wolvie out. And I don't think Spider-Man would like you getting sick in his hideout tunnels.
She crawled past another security camera, noting the blinking ready light in the front of the camera. Spider-Man had 'fixed' the cameras by the simple expedient of taking a picture of the vent shaft's darkness and taping the picture directly to the front of the camera lens. No one would see her until she was ready to be seen.
Which was coming up. And she had another problem to worry about, and another subject to get her mind off the hellish memories being in this fetish club evoked. How were she and Logan going to escape? Donald Pierce was capable of doing some pretty brutal things to other people, and especially to Logan, who had escaped him time and time again. What if he had incapacitated Logan? She didn't have a watch on her wrist, but the growing fatigue in her body, held back but not completely banished by adrenaline, told her it had to be pretty late—or early, as it happened. She and Remy had stayed out until almost one o'clock the previous night; the way her body was feeling, it had to be at least that, or later. She'd only gotten six hours of sleep, and it was telling on her strength and focus.
She slid along the vent shafts, pondering her plan. She was going to be a bit handicapped if Logan wasn't in decent shape. She prayed Pierce hadn't hurt him too seriously as she peeked down another grille into another room, and looked into it to check her bearings.
This room was the meeting room for the Hellfire Club's Inner Circle. Furnished in black wood with heavy wine-colored draperies at the windows, matching carpet, and matching upholstery in the chairs, it was also decorated with various implements of torture along its walls. A depressing room, she thought. Too dark.
But this was where she wanted to go. And as luck would have it, two of the members, an Asian woman clad in a black leather bustier and a tall, imposing African man wearing nothing but a pair of 'Matrix'-inspired shiny black leather pants, boots, and matching trench coat. Totally cliché. Jubilee shook her head and sighed.
But if they were here, that meant armed guards would be just outside the door. And that was a risk she hadn't wanted to take However, she had no choice.
Carefully positioning herself above the flimsy metal grille with her knees and hands on the solid metal vent shaft walls around it, she carefully eased her right knee onto the grille. Then her left hand. Then, very carefully, her right knee.
And that was enough for the metal grille. It caved in under her weight, exactly as she'd planned, so they would think she had fallen by accident. She didn't want it to look like she wanted to get captured; she wanted to make them think they had captured her. If they thought that, they'd be more inclined to take her straight to Donald Pierce, and Wolvie. She didn't want to spend any time in those rooms being subjected to their torture, which was likely if they thought she had let herself be captured on purpose. If they didn't feel like they were in control, they might work her over before taking her to Donald.
There was a brief moment of weightlessness, a feeling of falling. She gathered her feet under her as Logan had taught her in the last few months of Danger Room sessions, and landed on the balls of her feet. Immediately dropping into a crouch, she started firing low-energy paffs into the room.
The woman and the man were taken totally by surprise. By the time they turned around, Jubilee had already paffed half the furniture in the room, leaving scorch marks; and as the man rose out of his chair and turned, Jubilee sent a slightly larger plasmoid at the chair, exploding it right under his rear. He yelled in surprise and fell forward, trying to protect his face from flying wooden splinters.
The woman reacted a little faster than the man, but still not as fast as she would have had to in order to gain the upper hand over Jubilee. She was wearing ridiculous high-heeled boots that didn't allow for a lot of swift movement, and as she turned and tottered toward Jubilee, Jubilee sent a low-energy paff toward her feet. The resulting explosion broke the heel from her shoe, and she toppled over. Her head hit a heavy carved desk leg, and she went out cold.
If Jubilee hadn't been watching the door and the other man so warily she would have smiled. She'd discovered early on that heels were a nuisance. All very well for Ororo and Rogue, who took to the air in a battle; or Jean, who almost always moved closer to Scott in the heat of a battle to take advantage of the width of his firing field. Heels slowed you down; Jubilee had designed her black and red suit with feet that had rubber soles, for gripping on slippery surfaces and increased flexibility. They were actually designed on the slippers she wore for her gymnastics practice. She had more maneuverability and no balance issues in heelless soft shoes.
The man yanked open a drawer and pulled out a gun. Jubilee threw up her hands as soon as she saw it, and formed a shield out of her plasmoids; a glittering wall of sparks that sprang into existence between her and him. He began to circle, as if to get around her; she moved with him.
He made a half-circle around the room, dodging her plasmoids as she hurled them randomly. How much longer would it take for the guards outside the room to come in and capture her? She didn't want to make it look too easy…but she also wanted to get to Logan, as fast as she possibly could. She kept one eye on the door and one eye on the man in front of her, while at the same time she tossed plasmoids at him. Some hit him; but they were too weak to do any major damage, and he shook them off.
Jubilee was starting to wonder if there weren't any guards on the other side of the door, and wondering if she shouldn't just dispatch the man and try to find Logan herself when a sudden agony blossomed behind her left shoulder.
She screamed and lost control of her plasmoid wall…or so it would seem to the man. As she went down, she saw two men each carrying guns, step out from a hidden door under some heavy burgundy drapery against one wall; and she smiled to herself through her pain. They had aimed for the bright red patch of fabric that covered the entire top of her shoulder, and the bullet had entered her back just above her shoulder blade. She could feel it, a burning, fiery pain, in the front of her chest, below her collarbone and above her first rib, in the flesh of her upper chest. It hurt, but not as bad as her screaming was making it out to be. Perfect. It looked like they had taken he down, incapacitated her, and if they thought that, they'd be more tempted to underestimate her.
The man in the black trench coat reached her at the same time as the two men holding guns. Jubilee lay on the floor, pulling the acting job of her life, curled up with tears streaming down her face and crying pathetically. "Hey, isn't this the girl Pierce's looking for?" said the man.
One of the guards hauled Jubilee upright by her shoulders, sending fresh stabs of pain through her wounded shoulder. Jubilee screamed again in feigned but still convincing agony. The blood soaking the back of her uniform helped that impression along some, too. She let that arm go limp, feeling the pain ease a little as the bullet no longer rubbed against tense muscle, and pretended she had lost the use of the arm, cradling it and crying helplessly.
The African cupped a hand under her chin and raised an eyebrow. "Looks like it," he rumbled, his voice a deep basso profundo that reminded Jubilee of Bishop. "Take her to Donald and his new pet, that other mutant. He'll want to see her. And after he's done, I'll ask him if we can have her. I like Asian girls." He slapped Jubilee's face, hard, snapping her head back on her neck. Dazed, Jubilee offered no resistance as they guard took her arms and twisted them up behind her back, making her cry out as he half-led, half dragged her from the room.
Donald dropped his arms, and Logan sagged against the adamantium shackles that bound him to the X-frame. His throat hurt from screaming, and pain from the electricity that sizzled along his nerves and crackled up and down his spine was making thought almost impossible. However, it wasn't the worst pain he'd ever felt, and he still managed to keep from Donald the information the cyborg wanted from him; Jubilee's location.
Some time ago (Logan's time sense was getting hazy) a guard had come back with the news that his shift was over, he'd brought his team back from the warehouse Logan had hidden Jubilee, and hadn't found the girl. Donald had flown into a rage, backhanding the man and demanding that he go back and look again…and when the man had assented and left, Donald turned to Logan, demanding to know where Logan had hidden Jubilee. Logan had grinned wolfishly, bared his teeth, and refused to say a word.
So Donald had commenced torturing him. Being a cyborg, he didn't tire like a human would; and the constant jolts of electricity, interspersed with periods where he would slice into Logan's skin with knives to force his healing factor to work, was draining Logan. He could only hope that Jubilee had escaped the warehouse and gone home, and the X-Men would come quickly. Jubilee had seen their captor was Donald Pierce; and Pierce's only known hideout in the city was here, at the Hellfire Club's headquarters. The X-Men would come straight here first.
There was a sudden scuffle from the hallway, and Donald stepped back from where he was slicing into the skin of Logan's chest with a thin, sharp-bladed scalpel to turn toward the door. Logan raised his head to see what the interruption was…and was hit with the smell of Jubilee's blood and pain as the door flew open and a guard shoved Jubilee into the room roughly, letting her sprawl to the floor.
"Is this the mutant you were looking for?" The guard asked Donald, and Donald replied affirmatively. It was all lost on Logan, who yanked against the adamantuim shackles binding him and roared in fury as she saw the blood darkening the fabric of Jubilee's distinctive black and red suit, and he saw her tear-streaked, bruised face. She turned her face up to his, waited until Pierce had turned to speak to the man at the door, and then gave him one slow, deliberate wink. In her 'injured' hand and arm, a faint shimmer of colored plasmoids danced briefly before flickering out as the door closed and Pierce turned his attention to Jubilee. And just like that, as soon as he looked at her, the mask of a helpless, frightened girl slipped back over her face.
Logan knew she had something up her sleeve; and the fact that she wore her black and red uniform spoke of a plan. She had obviously gone back to the mansion and brought back help, or she wouldn't be dressed like that; now he had to make Pierce think Jubilee really was incapacitated. They would both have to keep the cyborg occupied long enough for the cavalry to arrive.
So Logan rattled his chains, roared in fury, and threatened Pierce with death if he so much as laid a finger on Jubilee. Pierce smiled at that, then reached down and grabbed Jubilee's wounded arm, hauling her up by the bleeding limb. Jubilee screamed weakly, letting more tears fall from her eyes, pleasing the sadist in Pierce even more. "I've finally got you and Logan here," he gloated smugly. "How come you hang around him so much, huh? What does he have that would appeal to a little thing like you?" He shook her by the arm again, bringing more gasping sobs from Jubilee as she sagged in his hands.
He grabbed a handful of the front of her uniform, and pulled her upward until her face was only an inch or so from his. "Are you in pain? Hmm?" Something caught his eye then, and he reached for her chest. Logan sucked in a breath, sure that Donald was going to hurt Jubilee…but the cyborg only reached for the thin silver chain around Jubilee's neck and pulled the small silver charm out from under her shirt. "L," he read. "L…for Logan?" He started to yank on the thing, trying to pull it off Jubilee's neck.
The chain was stronger than it looked, and he tugged harder. As he did so, Logan saw Jubilee's injured left arm reach down to Pierce's belt and grab a small silver object, about the size of a credit card. Logan's heart leaped. That little device controlled the electronic locks on the shackles that held him captive. He saw Jubilee's thumb move to hit the switch…
Pierce dropped her as the necklace clasp gave way and the chain slid free, leaving a red welt on Jubilee's neck. She fell awkwardly, not to her feet, but to her knees, where she curled over and tucked the hand holding the control into her other one. Pierce ignored her for a moment, thinking her in too much pain to do anything…and underestimated Jubilee. As soon as she realized he wasn't looking at her, she whipped her hand out from under her body, pointed the device at Logan's X-frame, and pressed the button.
The shackles spring open, and Logan fell forward from it as Jubilee sprang to her feet. She dropped the device to the floor, aimed a small but intense paff at it, and it exploded in a shower of white sparks and a metallic ping of circuitry. She took two rapid steps back, taking her place at Logan's side, supporting him as he staggered. "You okay, Wolvie?" she said, never taking her eyes off Donald Pierce, who was looking at her as if he'd been struck by lightning.
"You…but you…"
"I'm not the same little girl you fought last time," Jubilee said, her voice firm. "You didn't think I could be taken out by a little shoulder wound, did you?" She laughed at him.
Pierce dropped the sliver charm and chain and took a step toward Jubilee. She brought her hand up, and a glittering 'bubble' of plasmoids appeared around herself and Logan. Pierce reached out to that bubble…and was rebuffed by a series of full-force plasmoid explosions.
"We're leaving." Jubilee said firmly. "And you're not stopping us."
The door burst open, and the room suddenly filled with people, guns drawn. Logan pulled himself upright with an effort, determined to keep those bullets from hitting Jubilee.
"We're leaving." Jubilee's eyes started glowing an eerie blue, and a rainbow of sparkles started dancing around her outline. She spoke flatly. "Get out of the way, Donald."
He didn't show any signs of moving. In fact, he took a step forward and morphed his adamantium arms into tentacles again, reaching for Jubilee. Logan growled and took a step forward, almost but not quite touching the plasmoid bubble.
Pierce touched it first.
And the bubble exploded.