Ice hurt. That was all he was really conscious of – the hurting, which was a gnawing, burning pain, and the way the unforgiving surface beneath him was pressing against his body. He hated fire with a passion, hated the pain of a burn beyond all else, and knew that this was why he had encountered such a powerful pyrokinetic. Pitting opposites against each other took sharp and strategic thinking, as well as advanced intelligence, to know Ice was going to be in this particular sluice-room at precisely the moment he was.

Amusement bubbled up wildly, and pain stabbed through his ribs as he chuckled.

The ringing in his ears was fading, allowing him to hear soft footsteps approaching him. There was a creak of leather and the footsteps stopped, and Ice fought to open his eyes, knowing what he would see. His eyelashes were gone, and through their sooty remains he saw a pair of scuffed black boots disappearing into the cuffs of fitted leather pants.

"You don't look so hot," came the silken whisper, and a hand caressed his head, causing the burned skin there to scream in protest. "Pun not intended."

"Just kill me and put me out of my misery," Ice told him dryly, his lips cracked and his voice hoarse. He hacked, body convulsing on the cement, and spat out a ball of black phlegm.

"You're not so badly injured," the caressing voice murmured to him. "You'd recover fully with hospital help, and be just as beautiful as you ever were. I do apologize for all this, but you're cunning enough to realize it was necessary. Forgive me, Irilisan?"

"Fell," he rasped, swallowing until he felt his voice would work. "Oh, I'd forgive you, you scorpion. But I'd be the only one. There's the others to contend with, and when they find out you've turned traitor, they'll tear your belly open and devour your soul, then shit it out and devour it again, a thousand times before they think you've suffered enough."

"They only wish they had that sort of power," he said dryly, kneeling and looking Ice in the eye. Ice was instantly lost in purest ebony, depthless and eternal, the reflection of the essence of The Void. "But their rage is impotent. They'll be grafted into my creation, my Collective, and serve me until they're used up… all except Sabbath. Her, I'll kill." Slender fingers trailed over Ice's burning cheek almost tenderly, and a quicksilver smile creased features so heartbreakingly beautiful they could have belonged to Satan, Himself. "But you, I'd spare if I can. If you'll join me willingly… not as my thrall, but as my partner. You're not like them, Irilisan… you're a scorpion too, and like me, your power could shake the world on its foundations. We're both of us monsters, and we could be gods, if you would only consider my vision: a world where Psis rule and humans are returned to the stone age, to labor forever as our servants and serve as food for our lusts. A world where power serves the Powerful, where the strong flourish and the weak are devoured. An essential world, a primal world of darkness, chaos, and spontaneity, a world where the likes of us could be deities in our own right. I would cleave to you as my other half, for surely you've realized by now that I love you."

Ice pulled himself together slowly, painfully, and managed to get his hands and knees underneath him, pushing himself into a kneeling position, then collapsing back on his ass. His head swam for a moment, but at least he was sitting upright, and he fixed blue eyes dark with amusement on the beautiful telepath.

"You don't know love," he said simply. "You know even less of it than I do, and that's saying something. What you know is selfishness, craving, and the bitter emptiness that is your soul. In that, you're right… we're not different."

"Come with me," he urged, eyes dancing hypnotically, leaning toward Irilisan, his lips parted slightly as his gaze fixed upon Ice's reddened and chapped mouth. "Cleave to me. No one else could be my equal, or really know me. Nobody else is as black inside…."

Ice's eyes softened and he smiled slightly, a devilish, sardonic smile that caused those black eyes to flare with glee. "Ruling a world of discordia, reveling in the pain and suffering of the masses that made us outcasts, taking as we please and bathing in the blood of the sheep?" he mused, still smirking. "Sounds like fun." His fingers shot out and wrapped around a slender throat, digging in with a tiger's strength.

Fell's eyes bulged and he immediately struck out at Ice's mind, but Ice's many shields slowed him and he wasted precious time battering them down as they sat there, frozen in their strange tableau, Ice's powerful hand squeezing Fell's neck like a vise, blood welling and dripping down his fingers where his nails broke that perfect skin, sweat rolling down both their foreheads as they battled in their minds. With a mighty effort, Ice shifted forward and let his weight topple Fell backward, clamping his other hand around Fell's trachea and bearing down with his body as well as his strength. Fell choked, beginning to turn an unhealthy shade of blue.

But it wasn't enough. Within their minds, Fell smacked the last of Ice's shields aside and came howling into the haven of his mind, tearing and ripping, shredding everything he found there. Ice cried out in supreme agony as he was rended from the inside, feeling his very self being unraveled, all his memories torn away and his personality receding like water down a drain. Precious little was left already, but with it, he sped things up a bit, digging his nails into Fell's throat, placing one hand on his shoulder, and giving a mighty heave. His shoulders twisted, and there was a ripping sound, followed by spurting warmth and wetness.

The attack ceased immediately. Fell dropped to the cold cement, spasming as his life's blood left him in a fine red spray. His eyes fixed on Ice then, hollow with betrayal and the loss of the thing he had wanted most in the world. His lips moved, just barely, forming a single word, a question.

Why?

Ice knelt over him, his chiseled features impassive. "Because you know less of love than I do," he said hoarsely. "And I know something of it. And because you're the serpent in the legends, who devours his own tail in his hunger – A terrible and cunning evil, but not a wise one. And because…." He dropped to the ground, bloody hands slipping on the cement and dropping him hard on one shoulder. "Because…." His cracked lips moved against the concrete. "Because your timing is fucking horrible," he breathed, and passed out.

X-X-X

Dust sifted down from the ceiling of a stone chamber, the only sign of movement in what had, five minutes ago, been a riot of noise and explosions. Plaster and concrete, carved into jagged chunks, covered the floor to a depth of several feet, and part of the cavern's roof gaped open to a higher level of tunnels.

In the center, a dull blue light shone from beneath the layers of debris. It flickered like a dying candle, then flared, then exploded into force, shattering the newborn stillness of the cavern yet again. Once again, chunks of matter flew in every direction and rained against the walls and littered floor, and in the place where they had been stood a single figure, blazing with brilliant blue light. Her hair undulated above her head, lifted by the force of the Power blazing around her, and her coat billowed, held in at the waist by her tightly clenched fists. The blue light shone out of her eyes, turning them into pools of terrible blankness, and her feet hovered several inches above the now-bare patch of floor. She was an awesome figure, rising steadily toward the ceiling as, below her, the other members of her coterie picked themselves up and dusted themselves off.

"A set-up," Flynn cursed as he checked his weaponry and found it all in place. Rel's outer three shields had all collapsed, but the very last one, which had stood inches from their bodies, had held, praise God. He touched the medal of Saint Christopher around his neck, which had been his mother's, and muttered a quick thanks to whoever might be listening.

"How delightfully unexpected," Damon said dryly, standing up and brushing himself off fastidiously, his already pale features taking on a corpse-like appearance in the blue light his lover was shedding.

"This took some preparation." Stefan was still on the ground, solicitously checking Mars for wounds. She batted him away impatiently.

"Then we WERE betrayed. Somebody deliberately double-crossed us," she growled, picking up her street-sweeper and slinging the strap over her shoulder.

"Somebody?" Damon said, his voice thick with irony, his face tilted upward to where Rel was floating and still blazing like a miniature sun. "Angel, calm down and come join us. We need to move quickly and wisely now."

At first, she didn't seem to have heard him, but eventually, the sapphire blaze vanished and she dropped heavily to the ground, landing with an apathetic thud. "We were betrayed," she said through clenched teeth, quivering with rage. "And my instincts tell me it wasn't Schwarz."

"Instincts and logic," Stefan said quietly. "They couldn't have done it. We didn't share the plan with them until an hour before we put it into action. Which means it was someone at our conclave."

"Which means we were betrayed by another Inconnu," Mars said under her breath, head shaking. "Which makes it worse."

"Aye, and who would?" Flynn wondered. "We, all of us, need to stick together for survival. Bloody suicide, this is, destroyin' the very thing what keeps you safe."

"It's not a matter of who would," Damon said disdainfully, eyeing them as if they were particularly slow children. "It's a matter of who COULD. If you'd consider it for a moment, you'd realize the options are limited. Who has the ability to know our plans even if not present at our meetings, control a collective of dead but Powerful minds, and keep us all from the truth at every turn? Who could block my Power?" he wondered in a deadly tone.

"Only a Telepath can block another telepath," Rel said quietly, her teeth still grinding together. "Only a Telepath could create the Collective and then control it. Only a Telepath could lift our plans from our minds. Only someone close to us would know his way around our shields."

"Fell," Damon said.

"Fell," she agreed.

"Psychic vampire boy?" Mars mused, then nodded. "I suppose he has motive, too, then. Everybody, even a Psion, is food for him."

"Who was Fell assigned to go with?" Stefan wondered, green eyes dark with worry.

"Midnight Cell," Rel told him dully. "Safe to assume, I guess, that they're all dead now. Which means we've lost Katerina, so that's at least one good Psion gone. Sabbath and Jake are with Schwarz, so I think they'll be all right. They've got two Wild Powers and they weren't born yesterday. Auspex Cell might be in trouble, though."

"And Isa Cell?" Flynn pointed out, thinking of the honey-haired, violet-eyed Catria.

"Ice is the most powerful Psion here except for me," Rel said quietly. "And Fell is cunning. It would have been his priority to finish the two of us first."

"Unless he planned something different for Ice," Damon suggested, his amusement adding a musical tone to his voice. "After all, he's always been a bit… smitten… with everyone's favorite cryokinetic."

"If the two of them have joined forces, we might as well commit seppuku right here," Rel said dryly. "But Ice has always been unpredictable and there's no knowing what he'll do. We'll go after Auspex first, even though they're farther away – they'd need our help the most. If we can recruit them, we can go after Isa and have a hope in hell of standing against Ice, if he's turned traitor. Pray it isn't Fell. My Power wouldn't do much good against him – it'd only feed him, and make him stronger." She checked her guns, secure in their holsters, and raised her hands, palms up. All five of them floated upward.

"What after we find Auspex and Isa?" Mars wondered, eyeing Rel closely.

"We either retreat or we push on," Rel told her. "Both courses are equally foolish, so I'd prefer to push on. If I'm to die anyway, I'd rather die facing forward."

"And Schwarz? Fell will surely have planned for them as well," Damon pointed out.

Rel shook her head. "That part is out of our hands and in the hands of the Lady," she said ruefully. "Let's hope She has Her eye on the dice."

X-X-X

"Mary, Mother of God."

Auspex Cell chose not to comment on this manifestation of their temporary leader's former Catholicism. They were too busy staring in horror and swaying on their feet, in some cases. Every member of Auspex Cell was hard through and through. All of them had seen death and all of them had killed. But this was… this was….

"HOW?" Ash demanded, lip curling at the sight of bodies scattered like dolls, atrophied in positions of intense agony, curled in on themselves – fingers like claws, spines impossibly bent, limbs grotesquely skewed. Above the heads, the necks ended in ragged stumps that had leaked copious amounts of blood that slicked the tunnel floor. The liberal spatters of red, gray, and green fluids seemed to indicate that something had caused the heads to explode, and not in the manner of a high-caliber firearm at close range; more like a popping balloon. The body of Nathan, the animal empath, was slumped against one wall of the tunnel. Near his contorted hand was a gun. The others apparently hadn't had time to draw weapons. Ariadne's red hair was caked in the gunk on both walls of the tunnel. Draugt's was unrecognizable.

"Where's Katerina?" Guilbeaux pointed out, remembering her cigarette and sucking it down to the filter before dropping it. It went out in the pool of fluids with a low sizzle.

"Not here," Lupe murmured, trying not to breathe the terrible stink of it. "Maybe she escaped…."

Checking further down the corridor shattered this hope. Katerina lay on her face, eyes wide and staring, blood trailing out of her nose, eyes, and ears. She'd held onto her guns even in death. Several rounds had been fired.

Lupe knelt and closed those ice-blue eyes which had lost their look of keen intelligence forever.

"What do we do now, cherie'?" Guilbeaux inquired, lighting another cigarette. Lupe stood quiet for a moment, breathing shallowly through her nose, thinking. She was just raising her head when Nate called to her from back the way they'd come. She didn't want to go back to that carnage, but Nate was not the petty type, and the urgency in his voice beckoned to her. She went to him, and found him standing where the tunnel wall curved slightly, fingers pressed against what looked like several small, dark holes in the cement.

"Bullet holes," he told her. "All within a five-inch area at chest height. She shot to kill."

"She missed," Ash pointed out dryly.

Guilbeaux began to laugh.

Lupe eyed her coolly. "Step forward, Detective," she said caustically. "Tell us what you see."

Guilbeaux gave her a smile of glittering insanity and brushed her gloved fingers against the hole. "Dis girl, Katerina," she said lowly, "she's what we coonies like to call a dead-eye. Her Papa was a cop, see… I knew dat much. These holes, dey all be right about where da heart be, and dis girl, she don't miss, you know? Either dose bullets go straight through… or der weren't nothin' der to hit."

"Nothing there to hit?" Nate growled, but Ash's eyes, currently a startled color blue, widened in horror.

"An illusion," he breathed. "An ILLUSION. The same way someone blocked my empathy, someone made her believe the person who betrayed us was standing there. She fired, but of course, she didn't hit anything, and…."

"And he finish her off, and dat be dat," Guilbeaux said with finality. "So you tell me, ma cher… just who gone' be able to make dat girl see what ain't there? Who put dat sorta illusion right in yer head?"

"A telepath," Ash said slowly.

"Schwarz?" Nate wondered.

"Perhaps. We've no way of knowing," Lupe said. "Rhian?"

The mousy-haired girl shuffled forward, arms wrapped around herself, eyes haunted.

"Do you smell anyone here except the dead people?" Lupe wondered. Rhian's nostrils flared once or twice, but she shook her head. "Then whoever it was wasn't ever here in person. They made their heads explode, literally, from a distance. That kind of power…."

"Only a Wild Power, cherie'," Guilbeaux said almost cheerfully, grinning around her cigarette. "Either dat boy Fell, or Schuldig of Schwarz. But it don't matter much, way I see it – dey still be pickin' us off one by one, and we still be fallin' like flies if we don't play it close and canny. Now might be da time to get outta here."

"Retreat?" Lupe repeated incredulously.

"Oui, ma cherie'," Guilbueax said, face turning grave. "What killed dese folk could kill us just as quick and we ain't got no defense against it. We done made a SHIT miscalculation, and if we ain't careful, it gone' be the death of us."

"Acknowledged," Lupe murmured, still gazing in horrified sadness at the corpse of Katerina Drake. "But…." She lifted her head and adjusted the sword that hung from her left hip, eyes hardening as they swept over her Cell. "If we retreat now, we'll never be able to stop running. There won't be anyplace safe to hide if we let The One win." She saw nods of grudging agreement among her group, and pressed on. "Death is better than assimilation. We all agreed on that before. I think it still holds true, and I think that for the good of the rest of the world, we have to at least TRY to shut The One down, even if it costs us our lives."

Nate looked quietly rebellious. Ash refused to meet her gaze, feet kicking at the floor. Rhian huddled against a support strut, eyes wild and frightened.

Guilbeaux lit another cigarette and took a long drag from it, then slipped her lighter away and tipped her sunglasses down her nose, revealing a gaze of broiling insanity. Her mouth twisted into a mad, crooked smirk. "Ain't nobody in dis world ever gon' believe we were heroes, cherie'," she pointed out. "Ain't nobody gon' know 'bout dis throw-down after it's done. Nothin' down there but death."

"Then I go to it unafraid," Lupe told her coldly, hand resting on the hilt of her katana as she stepped over the corpses and headed further down the tunnel. "I remember the way."

Guilbeaux's eyebrows raised, but then she chuckled and tossed the cigarette, still mostly intact, into the gore and started off after Lupe. "Well?" she inquired of the other three Auspex Cell members. "You gonna jus' stand here and let that girl, who got a mile o'guts, go an' get herself killed? Carpe diem, kids." She tossed back her long, unkempt hair and hid her eyes behind the dark glasses once more. "Every day's a good day ta die."

Nate's fists clenched, the bone spurs on his knuckles standing out in sharp relief in the shadows. He fell into line and Ash let out a put-upon sigh and trotted after them. Rhian, having nowhere else to go, skulked along behind.

They moved cautiously and quietly, though it wouldn't have made any difference to a telepath if they'd been a troop of ninjas or a marching band – they were just as obvious either way. Twisting and turning, forging their way deeper, they walked knowing that every step brought them closer to a creature of terrible power, a creature that would kill them all.

Lupe raised one hand in a sharp gesture and all movement stopped as she crouched and squinted. Guilbeaux, one hand on her sidearm, hissed between her teeth, "Dat blue light… you see dat, cherie'?"

"I see it," Lupe murmured, then straightened suddenly. "REL."

"Don't be so sure," Guilbeaux cautioned. "May be a trap."

"It's not trap," Ash said suddenly, stepping forward and heading down the tunnel in the direction of the faint glow. "That's her, I can sense her, and the rest of Raven's Gleaning."

"Sense her?" Nate growled. "Your powers are back?"

"Yes," Ash said impatiently, then paused. "….Yes."

"Maybe the telepath's dead."

Ash considered that for a moment, then decided he didn't dare to hope. Lupe was already running toward the light, one hand still on her sword hilt just in case, and Guilbeaux followed at a more sedate pace.

They needn't have worried – Rel was glad to see them.

"It's Fell," were the first words out of the Kineticist's mouth when she reached Lupe in the tunnels. "He's been behind this all along. All of this was an elaborate trap to get us down here and bottle-neck us, take us out one by one."

"You're sure it wasn't Schwarz?" Lupe demanded.

"Schwarz wasn't privy to our plans early enough to plant explosive charges in our path," Damon said dryly. "It was Fell. He's the only other telepath powerful enough to control this Collective."

"An' what does dat mean for the Core?" Guilbeaux wondered keenly. "Is der still a Core or maybe it be dat boy runnin' things from inside his own head?"

Rel paused and considered that. "There must be a Core," she decided finally. "It would have been too risky, and too distracting, for him to be the Core and also be working to betray us. No, there must be a Core – the Core controls the collective and Fell controls it. He would have left himself outside the web. But we've got another problem."

"We don't NEED another problem," Ash protested.

"Be that as it may," Stefan said quietly, "we've got one. Fell set up a trap to destroy Raven's Gleaning, and we believe it's because we've got a Wild Power among us, someone that he feared. If that's the case, there's another Wild Power out there, someone he may not fear so much as he WANTS…."

Guilbeaux understood instantly. "Ice. I KNEW he be makin' eyes at dat boy."

"And if they've joined forces," Rel added, "we're in massive trouble."

"Nah, Ice wouldn't go an' do that," Guilbeaux informed her without a trace of concern for this eventuality.

Rel blinked. "Why not?"

"Dey got dis word, cherie', 'unrequited'. It means Fell was hot and bothered over Ice, but Ice was cool to him like he be to everybody. Dat attraction only go one way 'cause Ice mebbe have eyes for somebody else."

"He and Sabbath weren't like that," Rel said with utter confidence. "I know them both. And I also know that Ice DID show some attraction toward Fell at times…."

"Dat boy play more mind games den any telepath I ever knew," Guilbeaux argued. "He think Fell's feelins for him be useful, he encourage 'em. I ain't sayin' he felt nothin' like love for Williams, but if I remember right, he taught her a lotta what she knows. They been friends for a long time, and if it come down to a choice 'tween dat boy and dat girl… I think I know who he'd pick."

"She has a point," Damon said blithely. "Ice was Sabbath's teacher in a lot of ways. He considered her a prize student, but Fell has always thought her worthless, as he has always thought any non-psi to be worthless." He smirked slightly. "If Fell was a threat to Sabbath's life, which he most certainly is, I don't see Ice standing for that. It'd be an insult to his pride."

"Ice is a fucking monster," Mars pointed out, looking baleful. "He doesn't have human feelings. I say he's probably teamed up with Fell."

"I say," Lupe broke in, "we go and find Isa Cell and ascertain the truth for ourselves."

"Good idea," Rel said cheerfully. "Let's do that, then. Damon, is the block still gone?"

"I know where they are," he told her evenly, and she nodded.

"Then lets go that way and see what help we can be."

"And if it's a trap?" Lupe wondered, still mistrustful of Ice, and for that matter, of his entire Cell.

"Then let's not be impolite guests." Rel's feet lifted from the ground and she flew down the tunnel, Raven's Gleaning falling in around her.

With a nod and a grimace, Auspex Cell followed.

X-X-X