Red America

Part Ten: Crazy Like A Fox

Kitty tried, without success, to block out the banshee screech of the alarm klaxon. It gnawed at her ear drums and made her wish she could roll over and put a pillow over her head to dull the noise. Unfortunately, though, she was nowhere near her own bed, and the closest thing she had to a pillow was her battered flak jacket – and there was no way in hell she was going to take that off right now. She and the rest of her ragtag squad were crouched in a small alcove below ground level, a recess filled with junk and metallic garbage which looked uncomfortably like mangled, bloodstained surgical tools. Kitty had to wonder what they'd been operating on that would bend stainless steel so effortlessly.

"What the hell are the Ivans doing down here?" Cecilia muttered, as if she could hear Kitty's thoughts. Then, she risked a glimpse around the corner of the alcove. "Coast's clear for now, guys. Come on – let's go." Moving as quickly as they could, almost crouching so that they presented a smaller target, Kitty and the rest of the group followed her down the corridor, their boots thumping quietly on the gleaming white tiling of the hallway. Sam was clutching the barrel of his shotgun so tightly that Kitty feared he might make his knuckles burst through the skin, while Dani was simply glancing quickly around her as if to reassure herself that she and the rest of her comrades were still alive, and hadn't been riddled with bullets yet. Madrox, on the other hand, was still trying to keep a smile on his face, even if by this time it was severely frayed and haggard, and didn't bear any real resemblance to the smiles he'd given her earlier.

Understandable, really, Kitty thought sourly. Life and death situations will do that to a guy…

Brushing that thought aside for the moment, she glanced up at the wall beside her and saw a set of directions bolted to the wall, denoting different areas of the lower levels. Unfortunately they were all in Russian script, and so they didn't mean a lot to her. "Hank," she hissed, "can you read these?"

"I can try," Hank answered, glancing quickly about himself before making his way over to where the directions were positioned. Standing up to his full height, so that he towered over Kitty like a mythical beast, he ran a finger down the board and murmured a translation to himself as he did so. When he had finished doing that, he turned around and dropped to one knee, making sure that everybody else followed suit as he hefted his heavy machine gun into a vertical position. "We're two floors too high," he said. "The prison level and its medical facilities are further underground." Then he glanced at Kitty with a wry smile on his bloodstained face. "Kitty, I think you know what you have to do."

Kitty nodded, and held out her arms for each comrade to grasp. "Here we go again, guys," she said, the humour that she might have found in the situation beforehand draining out of her words, like blood from a corpse. "Don't let go." She kept her eyes open as she phased herself and her squad through the floor, watching pipes and concrete pass through her slender frame, and through those of Hank, Madrox, Cecilia, Dani and Sam. It was only when she looked at Madrox that she noticed that he had kept his eyes open as well, and that he was keeping his gaze firmly locked on her. As they went lower and lower through the floor, he winked at her, and mouthed something that she supposed was meant to be encouraging (she'd never been good at reading lips, so she couldn't tell what it was he was trying to say), so she simply smiled back at him and tried to justify his confidence in her by keeping all of the squad alive until they reached the next floor down. When their feet touched the tiling, Kitty went solid again for a few moments in order to catch her breath, and then re-phased to make the trip down to the next floor. When she had done that, she, let go of her comrades' hands and quickly drew both of her pistols. Whatever else happened, she didn't want to go out unprepared. "Where to now, Hank?" she asked quietly.

"Down the corridor to the right, and then we take a left," Hank said. "Cecilia, perhaps you'd better take point. I'd be surprised if the Ivans haven't got some heavy artillery protecting that area."

Cecilia nodded without a word, evidently knowing that her strange force-field was the best way of ensuring that the squad had a decent amount of protection from a frontal assault. Moving to the front of the small team, she cocked her rifle and began padding slowly down the corridor, looking to the left and right with every pace, keeping her eyes on any potential exit points for Russian soldiers. Kitty began to follow suit, and as she did so, she saw Madrox emerge from her peripheral vision. "Hi," she whispered. "I didn't catch what you were saying to me just now. Mind filling me in?"

Madrox chuckled, the sound coming from his dry throat seeming like the rustle of dead leaves. "I said your ass is the best ass I've ever seen," he said, brushing a grubby hand against her charcoal-streaked cheek. "And I meant it, too. It's really cute."

Kitty fought the urge to laugh out loud. "Oh, shut up, you fucking idiot. Is that all you can think of?"

"Just telling it like it is, Kit," Madrox replied, keeping one eye on his surroundings even as he grinned at her. Then his expression changed, becoming harder, more serious, and he went on "Might not get another chance, you know?"

"Thinking like that will get you dead, Jamie," Dani interrupted abruptly, nodding down the corridor in the direction that the medical facilities were signposted. "Let's get this over with."

"Good idea," Kitty said, taking a deep breath. "Everybody locked and loaded?"

"As much as I'll ever be, honey," Sam muttered, his cold eyes beginning to glitter with something that Kitty couldn't quite identify, but which made her feel extremely uneasy nevertheless. She hoped that he wouldn't come apart at the seams right when she and the rest of his fellow soldiers needed him the most.

"Let's get going," Cecilia said resolutely. "Time's a-wasting, guys."

Comrade-Colonel Elisabeth Braddock was shielded from the impact of the alarm klaxon in her office, but the pulsing sensation it produced still managed to penetrate her reinforced walls, giving her a dull but persistent headache as it did so. Fortunately, she was largely able to ignore it while she co-ordinated her troops' movements through the building with short, sharp telepathic commands – she had mobilised every single soldier in the building into trying to find the rebel filth who had managed to infiltrate her stronghold, and had ordered a scorched earth policy; in other words, none of them were to be left alive. Shot on sight, they would take any secrets they uncovered to a shallow grave, and her authority would be maintained.

Which was just as well – she knew that with two high-ranking rebel leaders in her custody, it was very likely that this was a rescue mission of some kind, and thus it could not be allowed to succeed. Capturing rebel leaders and then allowing them to be set free by their comrades was not exactly good procedure. On the other hand, she still needed to protect all of the other pieces of sensitive information that were stored in her headquarters, so she had surrounded the records and computers with heavily-armed Spetznaz troops, who would protect that information with their lives.

Elisabeth was acutely aware, too, that how she handled this breach of security was important for her own well-being – with a KGB officer in the building, and present at the time that the infiltration had occurred, it was of paramount importance that she resolved this situation as soon as she could. Otherwise, she could very well find herself scratching out the rest of her miserable existence as a prisoner in Siberia; and considering how she and Major Grey had got on so far, that seemed more and more likely the longer this was drawn out. It didn't help that Major Grey was currently sat across from her, leaning back in her chair and regarding Elisabeth with a wide, smug grin. Elisabeth could tell that Major Grey was enjoying every minute of this, and was taking great pleasure out of watching her sweat. KGB bastards never change, she reflected sourly.

It gave her great relief to see Lieutenant Drake entering her office, loaded rifle in hand, and she broke off her telepathic communication with half a dozen squads of soldiers in order to talk to him face-to-face. "Status report," she said shortly, not bothering to chastise him for forgetting to salute or for not standing to attention. There would be time enough for that later.

"We… we lost visual contact with the rebels almost as soon as they entered the base – the surveillance equipment in the lower levels is malfunctioning, somehow," Drake said, trying to disguise a nervous quaver in his voice. "The fire in the truck depot is under control, but the rebels themselves are gone. I ordered three squads of troops to take one elevator down to the prison level, and another three squads to start sweeping the floors between there and the ground one at a time. They'll all be moving through the lower levels right now, so the rebels won't be able to hide from them for much longer."

"Good," Elisabeth said. "Make sure that you push the rebels towards the med-lab."

Lieutenant Drake cocked an eyebrow curiously. "But, sir… that's where the rebel prisoners are."

"Exactly," Elisabeth replied, smiling icily. "Move another squad of troops down to Dr MacTaggert's lab, take up an ambush position there, and wait for further instructions. I want you to personally oversee this, Comrade Drake – I don't want any failures."

"Yes, Comrade-Colonel," Lieutenant Drake said, trying to disguise the obvious apprehension in his voice, and mostly succeeding – if Elisabeth hadn't been a telepath, she probably would have missed the telltale signs that told her he was petrified.

She wasn't the only one that could sense that, however. Before Lieutenant Drake could leave the room, Major Grey got to her feet, the smug grin fading from her porcelain-pale features as she did so, and said "Stay where you are, Lieutenant," making the young man freeze in place, seeming even more terrified than he had been a moment beforehand.

"Yes, Major?" he asked, nervously. Major Grey's lips drew tight in a thin smile, and she spread her gloved hands wide.

"Perhaps you'd feel more comfortable if I were to lend you some assistance?" she suggested helpfully. "I have a little combat experience, after all."

"Um… yes, sir," Drake said, his hands clenching visibly tighter and his legs struggling to remain still as one of his kneecaps started juddering spasmodically. "Of… of course."

"Good," Major Grey said, cracking her knuckles one-by-one and flexing her fingers inside their black leather gloves. "Follow me, Lieutenant." Striding across the office to its entrance, Major Grey drew her automatic pistol and flung the doors wide open, before she turned to look back at the still-stuck-in-place Lieutenant, a sly smile plastered across her face. "We have some rats to kill, wouldn't you say?"

"Yes, sir," Drake replied, sounding a little more confident as he did so. "Lead the way."

Before he could leave, though, Elisabeth caught him with one last, heavily-shielded telepathic message, making absolutely sure (as sure as she could be with a telepath like Major Grey, anyway) that she and her adjutant would be the only two people included on this conversation. Is Comrade Rasputin ready to be redeployed? she asked, urgently.

Yes, Comrade-Colonel, Drake thought back to her as he jogged out of her office. He's absolutely ready. Should I -

Good, Elisabeth mused, brushing her adjutant's thoughts aside without a pause. See that Comrade Grey crosses his path. We'll see how the immovable object reacts to the unstoppable force…

Logan blinked himself awake, fighting against the sedatives in his system. He supposed that his body was building up an immunity to them, finally, but it still made him feel sluggish as hell, and didn't exactly give him a good sense of what was going on. It didn't help that there was a howling klaxon going off somewhere outside, which stung his enhanced hearing to an almost unbearable degree. Ahead of him he could see the woman who'd been holding him here all this time hurriedly gathering up test-tubes and files and stuffing them into storage cupboards, her white lab coat flapping around her ankles as she did so, and he decided to try and get some kind of clue as to what was going on here.

"Lady," he slurred, the right side of his mouth not responding to anything he asked of it, "you mind tellin' me what the hell's happenin' out there?"

Momentarily alarmed, Dr MacTaggert spun on the point of one heel and raised the muzzle of the Russian Army pistol in her hand towards Logan, her brown eyes narrowed to slits behind the rectangular frames of her glasses. "I'd be shuttin' up if I were ye, lad," she hissed coldly. "I doubt even ye could survive a bullet in the head."

Logan snorted, trying to sound as brashly confident as he could. With all the drugs in his system, that was tougher than it sounded, but he decided he'd give it a shot anyway. Anything to stick it to this sycophantic bitch, after all. "I'll try anything once, lady," he said, twisting his cracked lips into a small, defiant smile.

That smile died as quickly as it had emerged when Dr MacTaggert swung the gun's muzzle away from his face and pointed it towards a half-conscious Valerie Cooper, who moaned through unresponsive lips and struggled to break the straps that were bonding her to her plain wooden chair. "I'm sure ye would," Dr MacTaggert sneered, "but are ye willin' t' risk this lass's life as well?" She clicked off the pistol's safety catch and took careful aim at the centre of Val's forehead, and smiled with poisonous satisfaction as Logan hung his head in defeat. "Good lad," she continued, turning up the gun's muzzle and flipping the safety catch back on. "I'd hate t' ruin all the hard work I did on that girl, after all."

Just then, there came a clatter of rubber-soled boots on the tiled floor of the med-lab, and from his position on the wall Logan could see a large squad of Russian troops pour in through the sliding doors behind Dr MacTaggert. At the head of the squad was a woman he recognised as Major Grey – the woman who had tortured so much vital information out of him with her psychic powers and her scalpels. He felt a shudder building inside his body, and grimaced darkly, forcing it down with every last ounce of strength he had left. He wouldn't show this sick bitch any more weaknesses – of that he was certain.

In any case, it wasn't her that he was most concerned about – behind her stood the whole reason he was even here in the first place, the towering metal monster who had ripped apart his resistance cell's base and cut a ragged hole in the resistance's manpower. Worse, the steel giant seemed to have been augmented somehow – his forearms were bandaged heavily and bulged a little at the wrist, but he still carried himself with the immense pride in his duty that seemed to be a staple requirement for any Red Army soldier, his almost placid features displaying no sign of pain or discomfort. Logan guessed that the monster's hulking steel form protected the giant from anything like that, but he wouldn't have put good money on it. As he pondered the point, however, he saw Major Grey walk over to where Dr MacTaggert was standing, her hips swinging seductively beneath the folds of her greatcoat, and then point towards the door of the med-lab.

"I suggest you leave, Doctor. Now," Major Grey said in a tone that made her words sound like anything but a suggestion. As she spoke, the metal monster shadowed her, towering over the suddenly frail-looking Dr MacTaggert and underlining just who was really in charge here. As Dr MacTaggert backed away out of the med-lab's sliding doors, all the while keeping her eyes on the steel-skinned giant, Major Grey began directing the other members of her squad to take up positions all around the med-lab. As she noticed Logan watching her keenly, she smiled – a gesture that almost froze Logan's blood in his veins. "Hello, Mr Logan," she purred. "I believe you know Comrade Rasputin?"

"Been introduced to him once," Logan grunted, every word a struggle for him to pronounce. Then his nose twitched, a familiar, distasteful scent carrying itself to his nostrils. "You wanna show your face, Drake? Or am I gonna have to come down and find you?"

As Logan spoke, he saw Comrade Drake step from behind the metal giant, his rifle raised and pointed directly at the centre of Logan's skull. "Shut the fuck up, hairball," he snarled, "before I perforate your face."

Logan grinned lopsidedly, amused despite his grim surroundings, his bloodstained face lending his smile a gruesome quality. "Wouldn't dream of doing anythin' else… comrade."

"Good," Lieutenant Drake snapped, as he turned and pointed towards a group of rank and file troopers that was milling around near the entrance to the med-lab. "You men – fan out by squads and draw the rebels in here. We'll see who's smarter here."

The troopers began to move out of the med-lab and into the corridor, their boots tramping on the tiles and making Logan's super-sensitive ears ring painfully. Major Grey noticed his discomfort and stepped forwards, cupping his face in her hand. "Are you hurting, Mr Logan?" she asked, false concern oozing from her every word. "I'm sure I can do something about that…"

And before he knew it, Logan felt a sharp, stabbing pain behind his eyes… and then felt nothing more.

Kitty fired a rattling burst of fire from her rifle, causing a few of her pursuers to fold into doughy lumps of ripped meat, then turned and rounded a corner to follow the rest of her squad. Dani had been hit in the left shoulder and was bleeding profusely, splashing large droplets of blood onto the pristine white floor, while Sam had been grazed by a couple of bullets and had had long creases of flesh knocked out of his chest and left thigh. Kitty didn't like the way that he was becoming prone to breathing in long, ragged wheezes, either, so she had had Cecilia try to act as a screen for the wounded, her force-field comfortably deflecting anything that came towards her – or as comfortably as possible, anyway; Cecilia kept grunting with pain every time a bullet bounced off her protective field, as if she was feeling the pain of the impact through thin air. Kitty shook her head and tried not to think too hard about it; as long as the force-field kept Sam and Dani alive that little bit longer, all she knew was that it was doing its job.

"Lovely fucking war, huh?" Madrox said sardonically, nursing a wound of his own on his right forearm, as half a dozen others just like him surrounded the group and acted as both point men and rearguard. Kitty and he had realised almost immediately that if they could use Madrox's abilities to soak up any other enemy fire that didn't get absorbed by Cecilia's force-field, they'd have a much better chance of survival. Madrox hadn't been too keen to feel his dupes getting chewed to bits by automatic weapons fire, of course, but he'd recognised that this was their best shot at leaving this hellhole alive.

"You really have a talent for stating the obvious, Mr Madrox," Hank said, keeping one watchful eye on his wife and another on the corridor ahead of him, his heavy machine gun trained on the doorways from which enemy soldiers could spring at any moment. Then he nodded towards an indented set of clear doors to the left of the corridor. "There's the med-lab. We'll have to be quick, or this'll be the shortest rescue of all time."

"No… no shit," Dani gasped, her right hand almost turned totally crimson as she tried, without success, to stem the flow of blood from her wounded shoulder with a strip of cloth torn from her sleeve. Kitty could tell Dani was close to collapse, her forehead coated with a thick sheen of sweat, but when she'd tried to offer the other girl some physical support, she'd been rebuffed angrily. She wobbled over to where the door-release button was, and slapped it as hard as she could. The doors hissed open, and Dani led the rebels inside –

– and that was when Dani's body evaporated in a bloody explosion, as she was hit from all sides by a fusillade of AK-47 fire from the Russian troops who had popped up from concealed ambush spots all around the med-lab. Her corpse collapsed in a mangled heap on the ground, a thick pool of gore collecting around it even as a black-coated woman stepped out of cover and marched towards them, placing her black peaked cap on her tightly bound red hair as she did so. Kitty was horrified to see the metal monster that had destroyed her rebel cell standing right behind the other woman, his massive arms folded across his chest and his gaze fixed completely on his beaten foes.

"Good afternoon," the red-haired woman said, a slow smile spreading across her beautiful, yet utterly ice-cold features. "I'll take those, I think." With a flick of her wrist, she deprived each rebel of every piece of weaponry and ammunition that they possessed, sending them flying across the room to settle in a small pile at the feet of a couple of grinning Red Army soldiers. When the weapons had stopped moving, the red-head folded her arms and turned back towards her beaten foes. "That's better. Now: I don't want to kill any more of you – not unless you give me a good reason to do so. I'd much rather put your talents to good use, so I'm going to offer you a choice – you can go to the gulag, or you can become counter-insurgency operatives for the Red Army. Which is it going to be?"

"Why should we believe you? You ain't exactly given us much reason to –" Cecilia spat contemptuously – and then began to clutch at her collar as the red-headed woman pointed at her with two fingers of her right hand, her eyes focused totally on the other woman's throat.

"I find your lack of faith disturbing," she began, "especially since you don't exactly have many other options. Let me put it more simply: you have two choices, and only two choices, that will let you live. Don't squander them." Then, with another flick of her wrist, she released her invisible grip on Cecilia's throat, making her collapse to her knees and leaving her gratefully gulping down great lungfuls of air. Kitty took a moment to check on her fallen colleague, and then glanced back up at their captor.

"What would you want us to do if we accepted your offer?" she asked, hoping to keep the woman occupied for as long as she could. The red-head looked down at her as she knelt beside Cecilia, and smiled that cold, evil smile again.

"Clever girl," she hissed. "Distract me by making it look like you're agreeing with my terms, until you can find a way to escape. You'd make a fine soldier for the Revolution." She paused, tapping her chin with one gloved hand. "Perhaps you still can be…" She turned and nodded towards the metal man-mountain. "Take her to a holding cell. Perhaps I can change her mind about serving us." She laughed, and then waved the hulking giant forwards. He made to take a step forwards, but then faltered a little, drool spilling out of one suddenly slack corner of his lips. It seemed to last only a moment or so, and then he began moving forwards again – but instead of grabbing Kitty as he had been ordered, his huge metal hand closed around the red-head's neck.

"You have interfered in my affairs for the last time, Major," the steel colossus droned, sounding as if he were merely a mouthpiece for someone else's words, as the red-headed woman struggled against his iron grip. "I do not take kindly to people meddling in my business – and I especially do not like KGB bitches. Goodbye, Major Grey."

Crack.