Red America

Part Eight: Medusa's Tears

Kitty gasped, feeling a tingle running down her spine into every last part of her body, and then, still careful not to make too much noise, eased herself gently away from Madrox and started to zip up her fatigue pants. Madrox tucked his t-shirt back into his own fatigues and winked at her, a broad smile flitting across his lips. It hadn't been the most romantic situation Kitty had ever been in, considering their surroundings and the situation in which they had found themselves, but it had been enough to take the edge off her understandable feelings of tension. Leaning over towards her partner in crime, she kissed him for a brief moment or two, enjoying the taste of his mouth and the feel of his skin against her own, and trailed a hand down one of his stubbly cheeks. "Thanks; I needed that," she said softly. "But just for the record, Jamie, you're still a dumb fucking idiot. Just in case you were getting any ideas about this becoming a permanent arrangement."

Madrox chuckled, and ran a hand through her short, closely-clipped hair, before tracing the smooth lines of her cheek affectionately with his fingers. "Sure, Kit – you're the boss. But you know… once you've had Jamie, one man is never enough. You'll come crawling back and you won't even be able to stop yourself. You'll see."

"Oh, don't flatter yourself, sweetheart," Kitty laughed as she smoothed out her clothes and tried not to look too dishevelled. "I was the one doing all the driving, there – and you know it, bitch."

"Flattery," Madrox began, a gleam flashing in his eye, "will get you everywhere." They kissed again then, and made their way back into the main chamber of the armoury that they and the rest of their rag-tag group of rebels – Hank McCoy, Cecilia Reyes, Dani Moonstar and Sam Guthrie – had discovered in the ruins of an old rebel safe house. They were careful not to hold hands or do anything that might have cemented their relationship into anything solid; considering the danger they were both in right now, it seemed stupid to try and start anything when one or both of them might die within the next twenty-four hours. Around them, the rest of their group were stuffing their pockets and some of the satchels scattered around the base with as many weapons and explosives as they could carry. Sam Guthrie tested the weight of a sleek, powerful combat shotgun and then shoved dozens of cartridges into the pouches at his belt and on his uniform. Hank and Cecilia, meanwhile, were coiling belts of ammunition for a heavy machine gun into a large carry-all, with Hank having slung the weapon in question onto his huge muscular shoulder, and Cecilia having dumped dozens of clips of pistol and rifle ammunition into a bulging backpack that she had secured onto her shoulders. Dani was policing up packages of plastic explosives that could each have put a sizeable dent in any one of a dozen city blocks and piling them into yet another carry-all when she saw Madrox and Kitty appear at the doorway to the chamber.

"Dig in, guys – there's plenty for everyone," she said, before she frowned, confusion seeming to wash across her face for a moment or two. "Hey… where've you two been, anyway?"

"Um…" Kitty began, trying to think of a decent excuse.

"Lookout duty," Madrox finished quickly, a note of panic seeming to echo loudly from his throat – or at least it did to Kitty, anyway. "Can't be too careful about the Russkies, after all."

Dani raised an eyebrow, and Kitty was sure that she had seen right through the flimsy excuse without even trying hard. "Right," she said, scepticism seeming to flow freely off her words. "Of course." Then she nodded over to where a stack of automatic pistols was gleaming in the low light. "Thought you might be interested in those, Kitty – they're the kind the Spetznaz use. Even found some hollow-point ammunition and throwing knives for you, too." Then she smiled at Madrox, pointed over to a pile of haphazardly-organised rifles, and said "And for you, sir, we also found some pretty decent guns. They're standard Russkie army issue, but they pack a hell of a punch. Take a look." She gestured to a ragged dent in one wall, with chunks of plaster heaped on the dusty floorboards in front of it. "I took it upon myself to give one of them a test drive, and that was the result. Like what you see?"

"Oh yeah," Madrox replied. "You bet your pretty ass I do."

Dani's eyebrow rose again. "You're a real fucking charmer, Madrox, you know that? I honestly don't know what this girl sees in you."

"Which girl?" Madrox said hastily, before jerking a thumb at Kitty. "This girl? I don't know what you mean. Do you know what she means, Kitty?"

"No idea," Kitty said, knowing this was about as sturdy a defence as cardboard was against armour-piercing shells. Stupid fucking Madrox, she thought sourly. He really knew just how to manoeuvre himself right into a corner when he didn't need to. "I certainly don't see anything attractive about you, man."

"I saw you kiss him when we got here, honey," Dani said, a crooked smile creasing her lips. "Then you two disappear off together and come back looking all red in the face? Doesn't take a genius to figure out what you were doing, you know. You were either making out or fucking like bunnies, weren't you?" She grinned. "It's okay to admit it, you know – no shame in fucking somebody for pleasure, after all."

"We were not fucking like bunnies!" Kitty snapped, suddenly embarrassed and angry with herself. "We were keeping lookout, that's all. Nothing happened."

"Whatever you say," Dani laughed, before she turned around to face the other three rebels, and shouted "Hey, guys – Kitty and Jamie were out back having casual sex while we were doing all the work!"

Hank bellowed with laughter and grinned broadly, his slightly elongated canines glittering in the moonlight flowing through the shattered windows to his right. "They wouldn't be the first to do something like that – would they, darling?"

"Nope," Cecilia chuckled. "Hank and I did it when we were on the run from a whole Russkie division. Pretty exciting, actually."

"Thanks for that image, Cecilia," Madrox said. "I really needed to imagine you and Hank doing it. That's gonna keep me up nights, you realise that?"

"That was sort of the plan, Jamie," Hank replied, winking. "We enjoyed it, anyway, so that's the main thing. I just hope it was as good for you and Kitty as it was for us."

Kill me now, Kitty thought desperately. And as if they wanted to grant her wish, Soviet rifles began to lay down a crackling barrage of fire somewhere down the street – not incredibly close to their position, true, but close enough to be dangerous. Instantly, the smiles disappeared from Dani, Hank and Cecilia's faces, and they immediately picked up their bags and moved towards the door of the building. Sam rose from his seat and pumped a couple of shells into his shotgun, no sign of emotion crossing his face.

"It's game time," he said coldly.

Comrade-Colonel Elisabeth Braddock stood with her arms crossed in the Empire State Building's functional, but not spectacular, surgical facility, which was adjacent to the experimental rooms that Dr MacTaggert had had installed when she had been brought to New York from Edinburgh. Behind thick bullet-proof glass in front of her she watched as Dr MacTaggert stitched up the torn, bloody scalp of Val Cooper, dabbing away at the sticky hair with alcohol-soaked swabs and carefully pulling together the edges of the wound. Elisabeth folded her arms and shifted her stance slightly, her brightly-shined boots clicking softly on the tiled floor, and wondered if Cooper was going to be lucid enough to give her any information at all. Of course, the fact that the rebels' operations had been sufficiently crippled to allow a brief relaxation Soviet patrols and vigilance meant that interrogating her wasn't an immediately pressing concern, but Elisabeth wanted to get as much information out of Cooper as she could before she threw her to the wolves in the local gulag. She also wanted to get as much information out of her as possible without having to resort to Major Grey's less than subtle interrogation methods, since she had no desire to repeat the Logan situation (and she suspected that Major Grey's position on the matter was likely the same, even though her sadistic treatment of Logan might have suggested otherwise).

Deciding to take a closer look at her new "guest", Elisabeth pushed open the door to the infirmary, and walked over to the chair that Cooper was strapped to, whose bloodshot eyes were looking around the room dazedly and not completely registering where she was. "How is she, Doctor?" Elisabeth asked, guessing what the answer would be.

"Physically, she's fine," Dr MacTaggert replied, as she wiped away some more dried blood. "I had to sedate her to get this done, though, just in case. I doubt she'd have tried to escape, but better to be safe than sorry, right?"

"Indeed," Elisabeth pondered. "Would you say that she is ready for interrogation yet?"

"I'd give her another few hours of rest yet, Comrade-Colonel," Dr MacTaggert said. "The girl's just been shot. I doubt she'd be able to tell ye her own name right now."

"We'll see about that," Elisabeth said in a low voice, before she bent herself at the waist and looked directly into Cooper's vacant eyes. "We're going to have a talk soon, you and I. And we're going to learn what it is that you can tell me. Do you understand?" Perhaps unsurprisingly, the best reply that Val Cooper could manage at that point was a wordless mumble that Elisabeth thought was intended to be a defiant refusal to co-operate. Elisabeth smiled thinly, and took Cooper's chin in between her finger and thumb, angling her head upwards slightly. "Do you know James Logan?" she asked, and was gratified to feel a spark of recognition ignite in Cooper's dulled brain. "Yes, I thought you might. He tried to resist me, too – and I broke him like a twig. Right at this moment he's through those doors –" and she gestured to the heavy black-painted doors that stood behind her like a pair of hanging judges "– and Doctor MacTaggert is cutting him to pieces to help the Soviet war effort. You have nothing left, Val. Nobody will come and save you. You might as well give in."

"All right, Colonel, that's enough," Dr MacTaggert said sharply. "I won't have ye intimidating my patient."

"Fine words, Doctor," Elisabeth snapped, "especially coming from somebody who specialises in vivisection."

"Ye don't need to remind me of what I've become, Comrade," Doctor MacTaggert retorted, fixing Elisabeth with a black scowl. "I still took an oath to protect my patients, and I won't let ye take that away from me, too."

Elisabeth smiled thinly. "Of course not. We all need our little placebos to make the world taste a little sweeter, after all." She nodded towards the black doors. "While we're on the subject, however – how is the Logan research progressing?"

Dr MacTaggert's scowl deepened. "Follow me," she said in a blunt tone. She moved towards the two doors behind Elisabeth, and then pushed one of them open in order to move into the laboratory beyond. Elisabeth padded after her silently, keeping her fists clenched at either side of her hips as she walked past rows of bubbling test-tubes and frozen cell samples. Dr MacTaggert came to a halt abruptly and gestured to a metal framework hanging off one wall. "Ye wanted results, Comrade-Colonel? There's your results."

Elisabeth turned her gaze to see what the doctor was pointing at, and saw Logan's nearly-naked body strung up on the metal framework, with tubes running in and out of his body at regular intervals. Blood oozed from each of them, swirling down towards whirring machines on the floor of the laboratory, which then returned it back to him discoloured with sedatives. If the doctor was expecting a reaction from her, she was to be disappointed – Elisabeth's stony expression did not change. "How close are you to replicating Logan's healing powers?" she asked, her arms folded neatly across her chest. "I'd hate to think this was all in vain, after all."

"Close enough," Dr MacTaggert replied blackly. "This is the only way I could get continuous analysis of his abilities – after the Darkholme mess, I thought it was better to get it right first time. But ye should have your super-soldiers soon enough."

"Good," Elisabeth said, before she turned on her heel and began making her way out of the laboratory. "See that it ends up being sooner rather than later, Doctor. I don't like failure."

Swivelling on her heel, she marched out of the lab and towards the elevator that would take her back up to her own command level. She grimaced at the thought of Major Grey being left to run the place while she made this little detour, but she decided that desperate times called for similarly desperate measures. And – despite her grating arrogance and smug condescension – Major Grey was definitely a competent commander; Elisabeth had seen the battle reports of the occasions when Major Grey had taken command of certain Spetznaz operations and rendered the enemy helpless within days, sometimes even within hours. The reports seemed to suggest that she had used her considerable psychic abilities to shatter enemy morale, and turn otherwise determined, resolute soldiers into weak, mewling victims – and from what she had seen of Major Grey so far, that didn't seem to be too implausible.

The elevator slowed as it came to a halt just outside her office, and the doors hissed open, revealing Lieutenant Drake standing crisply to attention, his boots clicking together sharply as he saw his commanding officer emerging into the corridor. "At ease, Lieutenant," Elisabeth said, waving a hand at him absently. "Report."

Lieutenant Drake swallowed in a nervous kind of way, and said "Major Grey decided to redeploy some of our forces while you were talking to Dr MacTaggert – she moved some of our armoured units into New Jersey and shifted some troops towards Brooklyn."

Elisabeth's eyes narrowed to burning slits. "I see. And where is she now?"

"Your office, Comrade-Colonel." Elisabeth could sense an almost tangibly bitter sensation of fear wafting away from the lieutenant's mind. Normally she would have enjoyed the taste of it, but she had bigger fish to fry at this point. Marching resolutely towards the doors of her office, she flung them open angrily and stormed inside, fury billowing off her brain like wood smoke. When she did so, she saw Major Grey sat at her desk, her cap laid on the wooden surface beside her along with her gloves, and a map of New York spread out in front of her. She did not even bother to look up when Elisabeth slammed a fist down on the desk, the sound of it echoing through the room like the sound of a hammer striking a bell.

"Long live the revolution, Comrade-Colonel," she said absently, as she marked some new Soviet positions on the map with a needle-sharp pencil and a steel ruler.

"And just what do you think you're doing?" Elisabeth snarled, enraged, barely able to restrain the urge to yank Major Grey to her feet with both hands. "This is my command, Major. I did not ask you to redeploy my troops, and I do not appreciate having my orders rescinded behind my back, either."

"For the good of the military effort here, Comrade-Colonel, I think you ought to," Major Grey snapped back, her green eyes aflame. "I received reports that a large arms cache in Brooklyn had suffered a radio blackout, so I moved some troops in to investigate. And as for the armoured units, Comrade-Captain Worthington requested that we send some reinforcements for his operations in New Jersey, so I had to move some tanks and artillery forward to his position."

Elisabeth scowled inwardly. She should have known that Major Grey would have a watertight excuse to hand – it was practically standard practice for a KGB officer to have alibis coming out of their ears. One rule for them, and one rule for the rest of us, Elisabeth thought sourly, before she composed herself and then gestured towards her chair. "Very well – you're relieved, Major. Step aside, please."

Major Grey spread her hands. "As you wish." As she stood and stepped away from the chair, she said "You'd do well to keep my considerations in mind, Comrade-Colonel – I don't want us to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, after all."

From her concealed observation point underneath a manhole cover, Kitty watched the numberless Soviet transports rumbling to and from the truck depot at the base of the Empire State Building, and felt another cold shiver of fear running down her spine like ice water. Around the base of the building were numerous guard posts and patrolling Soviet troops with snarling Alsatian guard dogs, with machine-gun emplacements studding the perimeter like jagged spikes of steel. Ducking quickly back down into the sewer, she dulled the splash of her landing as much as she could and turned to face the rest of her group.

"So how's it looking up there?" Madrox asked, looking desperately for some positive news in Kitty's worried expression.

"Nuts," Kitty said, shrugging. "They've got that place locked down so tight I don't think even a fart could escape. Besides which, even if we did get in, I doubt we'd get anywhere without being able to speak Russkie."

"Let me do the talking," Hank said. "I don't know a huge amount of Russian, but I know enough to pass myself off as one if I'm questioned. If I could find a uniform, I could say you were all my prisoners."

"Well, that's one problem solved," Madrox muttered acidly. "We only got another five billion to go, and then we're all set. You see any manhole covers inside the fences, Kit?"

"One," Kitty replied. "Although I'd be real surprised if it was still used – the Ivans have probably welded it shut by now."

Cecilia put one hand to her chin thoughtfully. "Looks like we'll have to hijack ourselves a truck, then," she said, with a wry grin. "Carjacking was never one of my strong points, but I'll try anything once."

"Okay – sounds like a plan to me," Kitty said, before she padded down the tunnel and pointed into the gloom at its end. "We'll have to withdraw back to a safer spot, though – trying to ambush a Russkie truck here would be like putting a gun to our heads and asking the Ivans to pull the trigger. Maybe we can use those Russian-language skills of yours to help us out, huh, Hank?"

"I certainly hope so," Hank said, cracking his oversized knuckles and flipping the safety of his rifle on and off a couple of times. "What do you think, Dani? Sam?"

Dani shrugged, and then slapped a fresh clip of bullets into each of her pistols. "I'll go with it if it gets us inside the perimeter."

"Guess I don't have much of a choice, do I?" Sam added sullenly, slotting some more shells into his gun and snapping it closed with a loud click. "I still think this is bug-fuck crazy, but y'all seem to think it's gonna work, so what the hell. If I gotta die, I'm takin' as many of those fuckin' assholes out with me as I can."

"Good to hear it," Kitty said with as much confidence as she could muster. "Hank, Cecilia – you take point; see if you can draw out any Russkies in our way. Dani and Sam, you go on ahead; Jamie and I will take the rearguard."

Dani smiled, and winked. "Okay, honey. Guess we all need time with our boyfriends, don't we?"

"Yeah, I guess we do," Kitty replied in a sarcastic tone, flipping a middle finger in Dani's direction. "Will you get going, please?"

"Sure," Dani replied, hefting her pistols and splashing towards where Sam was standing. "Come on, Sam; let's leave the lovebirds to it…"

When she and Sam had moved sufficiently far down the tunnel that she was sure she wouldn't be overheard or gawped at, Kitty turned to Madrox and opened her mouth to speak, but he beat her to it. "Don't say anything, Kit," he said softly. "Let's just try to stay alive, huh?"

"Sounds like a plan to me," Kitty murmured. "Don't die on me, Jamie, okay?"

"I'll try my best," Madrox smiled. He kissed her then, slipping his hands into hers as he did so. "Wouldn't want to deprive you of my brilliant company, after all."

Kitty laughed. Whatever else Madrox was, he certainly knew how to defuse a nasty situation. And right now, that was exactly what she needed…