A/N: ok, to start, i don't own these characters. and to end, yeah fanfiction is being just a tad f---ed up today and since it's like ten o'clock i don't feel like playing with it so sorry about the wonky format but you all look like intelligent people, i think you can figure it out.
Chapter Nine: Hide and Seek
Hank nearly fell backwards as he entered the lab the next morning. A look of surprise on a blue ape-looking man is quite an amusing sight indeed. Elijah looked up with a mechanical whirl. His chest was laid open for the entire world to see. Fortunately, due to his machinery there was no blood in sight. An extension of on of his fingers was making necessary repairs in his chest cavity.
"Hello." Elijah said casually as if it was normal to walk in on someone with their chest ripped open. He spoke with the voice of a child, but his eyes spoke of years possibly even beyond Hank. "I think it is safe to assume that you either work for Angela or you work for X23." Hank started to reply but was cut off by a voice from the doorway.
"More like I work for them right now." X23 walked into the room, eyes only on Elijah. Some might have even foolishly seen what they might term a mix of guilt and concern in her eyes. A brief staring contest ensued, one X23 lost. She was the first to glance away, grudgingly. "Look, I know you want to be left alone. I had no choice, Angela's back and she's throwing temper tantrums."
"Damn it, X! You promised you'd leave me alone, even if she came back." He looked at her. Hank swore she bowed her head in shame.
"Look, you want to spend the rest of your life hiding—"
"You sure are one to talk," he sighed, " I think I would have woken up anyway. She seems to have this annoying habit of hacking my circuits when she gets bored." He bore his penetrating ice blue stare into the very heart of X23. It seemed to be his way of saying that everything would be okay eventually, but for now, he was still pissed as hell. "So what's been going on and who is this?" Hank stepped forward.
"Allow me to introduce myself. I am Hank McCoy. I'm pleased to see you up and um…running."
"Mostly thanks to you. Not many people would have been able to get my neural circuits up and running so quickly. Hey! Maybe you could help me. Some of my machinery is quite out of date. I think I could trust you to upgrade me."
"I'd be happy to oblige you." X23 left the two tech geeks to combine forces and brain power. She closed the door to the lab quietly. She turned and wasn't surprised by the presence of Logan.
"Looks like you've known him a long time."
"It'd be hard not to, he's probably even older than you." He continued to stare somewhat menacingly at her and she sighed. "I'm pretty sure I'm enough like you for you to know that I'm not going to tell you anything."
"I'm just trying to understand where you came from."
"I don't even understand that or myself for that matter, so if you figure it out, you let me be the first to know. By the way, while I'm working here, leave me alone."
"What?"
"Believe me, I'd just try to kill you again."
"Try?"
"Fine, I'd definitely beat the crap out of you." Before he could comment she walked away. She couldn't start to like him. She couldn't afford it; she couldn't afford to like anyone. She headed down the hall. She figured she'd start setting up the computer that Elijah would need. To her chagrin, Roger and Alan were both in the room. She thought about avoiding a fight, for like a second, then walked in the room and sat before one of the computers. The gauntlet was thrown and the first move was theirs. She couldn't wait to see what they would do. Something told her, they'd surprise her.
Roger and Alan had both looked up in surprise when X23 walked into the room. They had thought she had skipped out on them especially after their last encounter. That wouldn't have been very fair considering they still had their revenge to instigate; it also wouldn't have been surprising. She hesitated in the doorway, then stiffened her spine to saunter into the room like she owned the place. Roger and Alan looked at each other. Either this would be a lot of fun, or it would be very painful.
"We thought you skipped town, especially seeing as how we owe you a beating. Damn, I guess we bet wrong." X23 raised one eyebrow sardonically at them as if to say "you are actually bothering to talk to me you insignificant worm." Alan grimaced under her gaze. Uncharacteristically silent, Roger made a move for the chair closest to X23.
"So did you really kill that kid?" Alan blurted to fill the silence.
"Why don't you go down to the lab and check." Both jumped at the sound of her voice cutting into the air for the first time. X23 logged into the computer and began typing. Roger continued to sit quietly next to her and X23 continued to type.
"Why'd you come back?" Roger posed quietly so that hopefully only she would hear.
"What?" X23 completely froze.
"You came back? Why? You don't owe us anything, and I know you don't like anyone here."
"You have no idea how much I owe you." Alan perceived this as a threat, Roger only heard the regret. Moodily they both got up with a scrape of chairs and left without incident. X23 was right, they certainly had surprised her.
Several days later Elijah was updated and fully functional. X23 had used the time to get a better computer for Elijah. No one wanted to know where she got most of the equipment, as long as the cops didn't come to investigate.
"Let the games begin." Elijah muttered as X23 plugged in the last jack into the base of his spine.
"Remember, if something happens, pull the plug."
"Yeah, yeah." Elijah muttered. His cynical nature had taken everyone by surprise. The attitude did not match his sweet, innocent, angelic child exterior. With one last sigh, Elijah closed his eyes and immersed himself into a stream of data. After about ten minutes, Elijah's voice filtered through the computer speakers.
"Man, the network has changed a lot since I've been out."
"Yeah, well don't soak up too much. We wouldn't want you to know everything."
"I already know everything."
A couple of hours later, Elijah had already found what he was looking for. He surveyed the plans for the lab where Angela was being housed, or at least her last known whereabouts. There seemed to be no security around the information. Elijah was instantly wary. Thousands of scenario's and probabilities rushed through his brain in about a second.
"Hey, X, I'm going in." Elijah finally decided. Her response that he took as an okay was silence.
The first thing he noticed upon entering was that everything was wet. It wasn't just damp either. There was at least a foot of water covering the floor. The building was hazardous. If he'd been in the real world, the building would probably be waiting to be demolished. Dilapidated floor beams from what used to be the ceiling were dripping water down to the floor in varying rhythms. The sound echoes off of the walls making the whole room a gigantic Chinese water torture. Elijah had been standing there for two minutes and it was already driving him nuts. Elijah took a step forward and paused. He felt like someone else was here, watching him. He called up some codes and sent them looking for any interesting kinks in the pattern of cyber space. He mustered his courage and pressed onward.
Walking through the knee-deep water was not easy. Elijah had only made several faltering steps when a voice crackled out from the darkness.
"Elijah, what's going on? I don't like what I'm reading."
"What's the matter X? Worried about me?"
"I just don't want to be held responsible when you do something stupid."
"Don't worry, I sent out some codes to look around, they should be back any time now."
"Just don't do anything stupid. It's getting harder to keep contact with you." Something crashed into the water behind him. Elijah whirled around, heart pounding in his chest. It had been a long time since something had scared him like that. "What was that?" Elijah peered into the darkness. He couldn't believe what he was seeing. The splash of water had never finished splashing, midway through it had completely frozen in time. The air seemed to waver around it. Elijah stepped forward and circled around the splash. One more step and his leg came in contact with some of the frozen drops. A jolt went shivering up and down his spine. Something wrong was going on here. Elijah put out a tentative hand and touched the part of the splash that had just begun to arch out into droplets, sending the whole thing shimmying. Everything around the warped splash began to swirl.
Eventually time rearranged itself. Despite feeling a tad woozy, nothing about Elijah or anything around him seemed out of order.
"Let's play a game." Elijah whirled around, for the second time in a short while Elijah's heart was frantically trying to burst it's way out of his throat.
"Angela? Where did you come from?" Elijah turned and tried to contact X23. While normally he wouldn't be too concerned by X23's silence, there was no sound coming from the radio and he began to panic. Unfortunately for X23, Elijah had done something stupid.
"Let's play a game." The old program of Angela's insistently and a little more forcefully commanded. It seemed he'd have no choice.
"All right, let's play a game. What do you want to play?"
"I'll be hunter, you be prey." Elijah sighed. Leave it to Angela to enjoy one of the most challenging games she'd ever created.
Hunter/Prey was a game without rules with only one objective: kill or be killed. According to Anglea's twisted logic, only the hunter could actually kill, that is, if the hunter could find the prey. Being stalked is not a fun experience. To be good at being prey, and to survive you must possess only one quality: a healthy amount of paranoia.
"Ready?" Angela stared at him with cold, glassy eyes.
"Yes." It was barely a whisper, but it was enough to begin the game. Elijah would get a slight head start, but it wouldn't matter, with all the water and what with being in a wide open space Elijah, to put it in X23's terms, was fucked. A flurry of emotions flitted through his mind like a thousand agitated bees: panic, fear, adrenaline…Thoughts that weren't helpful also fluttered around causing his neural circuits to begin to overload. He needed to calm down, and he needed to calm down now. Dodging, using chunks of debris to hide behind he made his way across the room.
Pausing to catch his breath, he noticed a grate in the side of the wall. He hoped that Angela wasn't looking or listening and pulled with all his strength on the grate. With a painful screeching sound the grate pulled away and Elijah dropped down into the opening. Pausing to catch his breath he realized how deathly quiet it had gotten on the ground level. All he could hear or focus on was his won rapid breathing.
"Boo!" Angela's face loomed up through the grate causing Elijah to jump in terror. He decided to quit thinking and let his instincts take over. He immediately headed down the long tunnel that the grate had led to. The pathway was black and impenetrable, however, this part of the building had remained mostly dry, so Angela wouldn't be able to track him by the sound of his footsteps as much anymore.
He continued down the path, stopping periodically to see if Angela was still behind him. Up until this point, he'd heard no sound, but now that he was paying attention, he could hear something, something not human. A low rumbling growl reverberated through the walls.
"We aren't the only monsters HYDRA created." Angela's voice came floating down the darkness to him. He immediately knew this was no longer a game and that he had to figure out a way out of there. He continued down the long dark tunnel, no longer caring if he was heard. Whatever else was in here already knew where he was, so hiding anywhere would be a pointless endeavor. Continuously being stalked down the hall, Elijah yelped when the floor stopped and he nearly plummeted forward. Some debris was knocked loose and he made out a faint splash below.
He nearly fell forward in shock at what he saw next. Elijah of twenty minutes ago walked through the door of the building and continued to wade forward looking around nervously. His search took him a little past where Elijah stared down open mouthed from above. He could almost hear X23 admonishing him not to do anything stupid.
"You're stuck in a time loop." Angela was again suddenly beside him out of nowhere. "Only one way to fix it." She said cheerfully as she joyfully pushed Elijah off of the ledge he'd been perched on. As he fell sound ceased. It was eerie. Right as he was about to smash into the water and then sequentially, the very hard pavement, time slowed. He barely brushed the water when the splash that had enthralled him earlier began to form. He saw himself come up to the splash. He watched his watery ghost tentatively reach out a hand and found himself doing the same. Elijah stood so that they were direct mirror images. As his previous self took a step forward so did he until, they'd meted into the same being.
At that moment time seemed to catch up with him and he found himself sitting in a foot of water just as the climax of the splash descended upon him guaranteeing him he would be soaked just in case splashing around in a foot of water hadn't done the job.
"What the hell was that?" X23's voice was a welcome if not loud distraction to the silence of the building.
"A warning."
"That was a hell of a warning, I'm pulling you back out now." Elijah just flopped back into the water and stared at the ceiling. We aren't the only monsters HYDRA made. Angela had actually supplied many warnings tonight, something that made Elijah nervous. Angela was not prone to be friendly. Immediately his large blue eyes popped open and he was staring into X23's flashing green ones. She wasn't happy. For once instead of yelling though, all she said was, "You'd better make sure no bugs came back with you," and "I downloaded the info your search bots sent back."
"It won't matter. Angela isn't going to be there. But I think I might know where she is."
Once again Logan found himself on a ferry with that unreasonable dread of water that he couldn't fathom, heading towards a house he never wanted to see again. At the fore of the ship Elijah stared into the water lost in thought. Logan watched in curiosity as X23 stalked up to him.
"So…"
"So…" Elijah wasn't sure, but he swore he saw her mouth quirk ever so slightly. He had a theory that X23 did have a personality somewhere in there, it just happened to be taking a vacation currently…or like in a coma.
"You've not been your less than charming self since you went back into the network. You said Angela gave you a warning, what was it?" Elijah sighed, he had to give X23 some points, and she really did have a lot more patience than people thought she did. This was about the third time she'd only asked in a day and a half.
"Look, if I'd figured that part out, I wouldn't be so fucking nervous, now fuck off!" Elijah slammed his hands down on the boat railing. He nearly sobbed and then caught himself. X23 looked almost shocked.
"Okay, I may not be good at reading people, but I definitely know, that is not a normal reaction for you. What's going on?"
"I think I need to go and lie down." Elijah said and he hurried off. X23 turned and spotted Logan.
"What are you lookin' at old man?" She sneered. Logan just turned away. He was pretty sure that was X23's subtle way of saying to leave her the hell alone. This was already giving him a headache.
"It's a house." X23 observed intelligently. Obviously she wasn't impressed. "Ok, wait, let me get this straight. Angela's here."
"Yes, back where it all started. Isn't that right?" Elijah turned to Logan. "Don't bother, I already know you've been here before."
"Yeah, the freakhouse from hell." Logan chimed in helpfully. "I do not want to go back in there."
"Whatsamatta? Scared of what goes bump in the night?" This was shot over the shoulder of X23's shoulder. Logan admitting fear had given her a boost in confidence.
"X, wait up! You don't know what's in there!" Elijah chased after her up the drive. X23 turned to look back at him. "Do you know what's in there?"
"No, not really, but I think we should all stay together."
"Fine, I'll be a team player."
"Yeah right." Logan snorted and kicked the door open. He had a very bad feeling about this. He always did.
The door opened slowly and with a small creak. The three of them stood silhouetted in the doorway like an image from a bad horror film. Surprisingly Elijah was the first one in the room. He immediately walked over to a panel in the wall.
"We're going to have to do some serious hacking in order to get to where we want to go. Angela's not messing around." With that said he pulled a jack out of the panel and inserted it into his left eye. Logan mentally shuddered and looked down the hall at the door from his dreams, an ever potent presence that he wanted to forget.
"So where are we going?" X23 asked. She was suddenly very nervous. She felt as though she had been here before, but couldn't place when or why.
"Where do you think?" Elijah started sarcastically, but was interrupted by Logan's solemn interjection.
"Through the door." X23 looked between Logan and Elijah like a dog trying to watch a tennis match. Finally she muttered under her breath, "I'll be so glad when this psycho bitch is taken care of. Maybe then you people will start acting strange."
"Don't you mean normal."
"No." She turned and stalked down the hall. Taking a huge confidence boosting breath, she mimicked Logan and kicked in the door nearly unhinging it. Anything you can do, I can do better.
Deep inside the house, something moved. Something became aware. Something was startled. People were here. They weren't supposed to be here yet. The shell began to process. The shell wasn't supposed to be aware. The connection had been lost. Something was incredibly wrong. The shell left and went on the prowl. Maybe the shell could find a new home. The shell had lost part of itself earlier. The shell went to find it.
Back up at the panel, Elijah had established contact and was currently trying to get X23 to cooperate and conduct her through a series of steps that would keep them alive a little while longer, not an easy task with a girl as impatient as X23.
"Are you sure I can't just smash it up?" She asked.
"Yes, you can't just smash it up." There was a long pause.
"Please?" She was almost pleading.
"Damn it, no! Now just do what I told you." She muttered something under her breath. Elijah didn't have time to pay attention. He was doing almost a hundred other things at the same time: disarming alarms and security measures, blockading viruses, looking for Angela, you know, non-important stuff like that. Something at the back of his mind began to tickle. It seemed almost like a presence. Elijah brushed it away with a flick of his hand. This caused the presence to fade away quietly, but I certainly wasn't going to be brushed away or ignored so easily.
The force came back. This time it was much more insistent. Since Elijah was busy trying to do a hundred other things at the same time, the presence found it easy to slowly invade his mind. The tickling gradually became an annoying buzz, which began to become a burning sensation. The pain inside Elijah's head faded down to a tingling sensation that eventually became a numbness that oozed into all his neural circuits. Paying more attention to what X23 was doing he barely registered the strange sensations.
"You should be good to go from here." X23 gave no response. Elijah slowly filed through all his running processes. He came upon the sequence of events that had just taken place. His curiosity piqued and with time to kill he ventured after the trail of breadcrumbs the presence had left behind. It would be the last thing he remembered doing.
The room Logan and X23 entered was definitely out of a sci-fi freak's fantasy. The room was filled with tubes large enough to contain people. More specifically, the tubes contained all the people Logan was looking for.
"You can't get them out." Logan and X23 whirled around. Elijah stood behind them with his head bowed. X23 stared intently at his blonde head. She could sense something different about him. She'd sensed the same thing on the boat ride over.
"What do you mean by that?" Logan asked completely unaware of the change that Elijah had undergone. Elijah raised his head and locked his piercing blue eyes with Logan's questioning brown ones.
"They have lost their minds for now. Even if you got their bodies out of here, they wouldn't be there." Throughout this whole exchange X23 had slowly backed away from Elijah. She needed time to think, she needed a computer, she needed to smash something, not necessarily in that order.
"You've been planning this for a long time haven't you?" She opted for the cliché banter between the unsuspecting idiots who'd just walked into a trap and the evil mastermind who knew the flies were already hung by the web.
"About seventeen years if you want to know the truth."
"Angela." Logan cut in helpfully.
"Brilliant. I suppose you really do have a brain in there." Elijah gave a high pitched giggle that was mangled by his lower toned voice. Without warning X23 ran for the door behind her. Logan wasn't sure what was going on, but he figured he'd be safer in a room with X23 than with Angela. They slammed the door shut and leaned against it.
"What's the big idea?" Logan gasped.
"You haven't seen all that Elijah can do." was all he got in reply. At that moment something slammed into the door behind them.
"You hold the door down." X23 said as she ran for a computer. Apparently luck decided to bet on X23 because they had conveniently run into a computer lab. Something flickered on the screen as soon as soon as she started searching.
"Hurry up!" Logan barked from the doorway. He was losing the battle.
"C'mon." X23 replied as she took off for the door that was positioned opposite of the one they had entered through. The door behind them exploded. There was no other way to describe it. Hinges warped the door so that it leaned drunkenly in its frame. Wood splintered into thousands of little shards. Logan chanced one look behind him and immediately wished he hadn't. Elijah, Angela, whoever, was surrounded by a cloud of electronics and technology. Before his very eyes the parts rearranged themselves and became extensions of Elijah's body parts. He was now at least as tall as X23 and his one arm had become a mass of metal. The fingers were long and needle-like. You wouldn't want to be cut by them.
"I told you, you hadn't seen all that he could do."
"Holy shit!" Logan muttered
"Holy shit is right." X23 replied. "C'mon, this way."
They were hiding. They had been for about twenty minutes now.
"What are we doing?" Logan was growing impatient. So was X23.
"Ok, when I got on the computer Elijah sent me a message, the real Elijah, not Angela in Elijah's body."
"Explain that first."
"When Elijah went into the net to look for Angela, I think Angela found him first. I think she downloaded part of herself into Elijah. It wouldn't surprise me, she'd older than he is. Angela's been wanting a new body almost since they turned her into a computer. I think she tried to take over one of your friends, but because Angela's raw data, and your friend's brains I am assuming are organic it won't work."
"But Elijah has an organic brain too, doesn't he?"
"True, but he also has neural circuits, and mechanical parts. Which is perfect for Angela because now that she's developed that nice big brain, she doesn't want to lose it. Elijah provides the best of both worlds."
"Ok, fine. This is all just a little too fucked up for me. So how do we free my friends?"
"Elijah's working on waking them up. We have to find and destroy the equipment imprisoning them."
"Fine, let's go."
"According to the plans we should be clothes, but we've got to quit running from room to room."
"How do you propose we get there then?"
"The air vents."
"C'mon, even I find that predictable."
"Exactly. It's too simple and predictable. Angela will never even bother to look there." Logan suddenly grabbed her arms.
"You'd better not be fucking around here." X23's response was to extend the claws in her foot and kick him in the stomach.
"Believe me, you'd know if I was fucking around with you." She walked across the room and pulled up the grate and jumped down. After half a minute Logan grimaced and followed her.
After twenty minutes of shuffling around in the darkness, the sound of their breathing their only form of communication, they finally saw light. X23 scooted ahead enough to turn around and they both proceeded to peer into the room below them.
"Where are we?" Logan asked.
"I think we're here." X23 replied stoically.
"You think? You think!" Logan's blood began to pound through his head, not a good sign.
"The maps I'm working off of are old. We're just going to have to take a gamble." X23 pulled up the grate as quietly as she could and slithered over the edge and fell lithely to the floor to land silently in a crouch. Logan followed just as smoothly and just as quietly. X23 was impressed.
They were in a very long, bright hallway. It oozed trap and Logan and X23 proceeded accordingly, so that when nothing happened they were very concerned. Their objective had been a long white door at the end of the hallway. X23 reached out a hand and turned the knob easily and shoved open the door, both immediately leaped to the side so as not to get hit by anything that might come flying out to impale them. Nothing came flying out. So Logan and X23 went in.
Where are you?
I'm right here. There's nothing you can do now.
Angela!
Yes?
Why are you doing this?
Your plan won't work you know. If they destroy me, which I doubt they'll do, you'll still lose your body.
Angela!
Goodbye.
The room X23 and Logan entered had been just as dark as the air vents, but as soon as they stepped forward things immediately began to hum and whir with life. What predominated the scene was almost too obtuse to describe. In the center of the room was a large tank. Inside the tank was a liquid substance that bubbled in rhythm with the machines that made it work. Inside the liquid was a mass of tangled tubes and wires that spiraled down from the top of the tank and up from the bottom. At the heart of the mechanical mess was a twisted and shrunken body. The eyelids seemed to have been worn away and the great white orbs seemed to possess no pupils or irises. What little hair the being had left rose in stringy, watery clumps on what was otherwise as very bald head. The nose was barely there and a great, gaping, twisted jaw screamed grotesquely and silently at them. The skin had darkened to a mummified purplish-grey hue. The body was naked and literally skin and bones, the hands and arms crossed over the chest in what would otherwise have been a fairly serene pose.
(A/N: If you've seen The Mummy, picture when they very first open the sarcophagus and find him…. "He's still….juicy." lol)
"What is it?" Logan asked searching for the right words.
"Logan, meet Angela."
So that's what you were up to. Clever boy. You know what we do to clever boys don't we?
Go to hell Angela, and while you are at it, get the fuck out of my body!
Oh dear, I can tell you've been spending too much time with X23.
Angela!
Well, I guess I'll have to use other means to get to the end. Rogue, be a dear, and give our friends a nice warm welcome.
X23 stepped close to the glass and pressed her face close to it. Her eyes widened and she ducked and rolled in just the nick of time. She heard the sound of a fist smashing glass and looked up in time to see a pale girl with auburn hair with one pale stripe of white and black clothing with matching gloves take a leap at her. X23 kicked the girl off of her and rolled onto her feet with a snarl, whipping out her claws with that spine tingling sound.
Logan finally registering what was happening came up behind the girl and locked her in a giant bear hug, struggling to restrain in her. At the same time X23 charged at them. The only thing that Logan could do was dodge out of the way or risk being skewered.
"X! Stop!" Logan gasped out because Rogue had managed to wriggle slightly free and elbowed him in the ribs. X23 as usual didn't listen and cut a slash open in the girl's arm. The girl rolled away crying out in pain.
"X, stop!" Logan yelled grabbing for X23 no instead. "That's Rogue." X23 calmed down a bit, but not before bloodying him up a bit.
"What the hell is she doing?"
"I don't know." Logan would have speculated further except that Rogue launched herself at him again, and this time the gloves were off, literally.
You're awfully quiet. Whatsamatta? Not enjoying the show? …Hey! Are you listening to me? What are you doing? Stop that! No!
Logan was doing everything he could to keep Rogue's pale hand from descending any further towards his face. X23 didn't know what to do. She'd already hurt the girl enough as it was and any more damage she had in mind would kill her. Rogue gasped and weakened so Logan threw her off of him and unfortunately into a wall. When she stood up, he looked in her eyes and he knew she was back to normal.
Oooh! You're no fun, but no matter, you only weaken yourself.
Angela…you're so stupid…
X23 had gone back to staring at the glass while Logan tended to Rogue's wounds.
"Yup. I think it'll work." X23 had walked over to the wall where the tank was. She had made a bat of a metal cylinder and once again stood before the glass. She closed her eyes and breathed for a second. Then she opened her eyes and with a yell swung the bat as hard as she could into the glass.
2 Weeks Later…
Rogue and the others had finally been given a clean bill of health. Elijah was undergoing serious tests to make sure all traces of Angela were gone. Logan had just come from a visit with Rogue when he saw Elijah staring out of the window.
"You know, she didn't mind dying in the end. I think it's kind of what she wanted."
"That wasn't any way for anyone to live." Logan replied quietly.
"She left you know."
"I know."
"She'll be back, now that she knows she has you." Logan snorted. "You'll see. I have a feeling a lot of people end up coming back to this place."
