Robin Hood
By: ShalCat-Kitty
Disclaimer: See chapter 1
I am so sorry this chapter took so long. I find that sometimes you have to leave a story alone for a little while and think it through a bit before you continue. And I was super behind on some school work but now, there's practically no work to do in school.
Wow chapter 8 already, it seems it was only yesterday the bomb was going to explode. Oh wait. That hasn't happened yet because I went back 6 days. Well guess what. Only one day left.
Thank you everyone for your reviews on all the previous chapters. Your comments let me know that I'm writing for someone other than myself.
This Chapter is dedicated to the actors on Mutant x because they do a hell of a good job and I would never have inspiration for this story otherwise.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxx Chapter 8: The Morning Light xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Emma: one day before chapter one
I woke up but kept my eyes closed breathing deep. There was a split second of terror as I opened my eyes to find myself in foreign surroundings. Then with a glance at the pulled apart computer on the desk, my memory came back. I had to smile, I was in his room. The previous night had been… amazing. I had never thought of Jesse Kilmartin as the type to be… how could I put this? A bomb in bed.
I scolded myself for the thought immediately.
This had been a very interesting experience for both of us I guess, the way I had connected our minds was different. I had never done it before. It had almost been as if we were having a full-blown conversation, but there were no words. I loved the feeling, and wanted to feel it again. His mind was beautiful.
Right now he was sleeping. I could feel his warm breath on the back of my neck, it came in steady calm wisps. I decided against getting up early like normal. No one else was around and I hadn't gotten much sleep the night before. Besides, I didn't want to disturb the molecular from his peaceful slumber.
I let myself drift back into darkness.
When I woke up again he was shaking my arm lightly. "Emma honey, wake up." I opened my eyes and smiled up at him. He was wearing a pair of blue jeans but he still held his shirt in his hand. My eyes roamed over his bare chest. He smiled back and leaned over to kiss me. "Good morning."
"Morning." I said as I sat up pulling the sheet with me. "Um… My clothes." I smiled sheepishly. My clothes were scattered all over the room. So were his.
He chuckled as well at the sight.
"Maybe later we should clean that up." He said. "But right now I've got some thing for you."
"Really?" I raised my eyebrows in amusement.
"Here." He tossed me one of his shirts. "Put it on. Let's go. You can get dressed later." he smiled.
"Ok." I put his shirt on and he put one on as well. He held out his hand for me to take it, so I did. He pulled me down the hall and out to the main area.
It was beautiful. He had set up a small table and chairs. The chairs were not on opposite sides of the table but right beside eachother. And he had made breakfast.
"Jesse it's so sweet." I told him. He pulled me into a side hug, then led me over to the table.
"I thought you'd like it." We both sat down and started to eat.
He held his fork out with a piece of fruit for me to eat. "Jesse." I said when I had finished chewing.
"Hmm?" He mumbled with food in his mouth.
"What if the other's come home while we're eating. They'll see and they'll know." I said.
"Then they'll know." He smiled. "Just because Brennan and Shalimar hide what they have, doesn't mean we have to."
xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Brennan:
Bright light blasted me in the face as I got to the top of the hill. I hadn't even noticed the sky starting to lighten. I couldn't believe it was morning already. After Shalimar left the safe house with Ashlock, I waited until they left the city then followed. That had been at almost 2 in the morning and now I was about a half an hour behind them. I wanted to stay back far enough that there was no way they would know I was following them.
I didn't want to catch up with them until they had stopped for good. This had meant going in circles. It was sunrise and they just seemed to start going somewhere. Perhaps when they stopped I would send the coordinates back to the others at sanctuary. I decided to stop for some coffee. In the last 48 hours I had only had about 5 hours of sleep. My brain was starting to shut down.
I walked into a café. The receiving end of the tracker never left my hand. While standing in line I glanced at the electronic map showing Shalimar's position, and the she wasn't anywhere.
The whole time I was there I watched the tracker. Silently hoping it would come back. Maybe I was too far away. My sleep-muddled mind couldn't understand.
When I got back on the highway, coffee in hand, I decided to notify the others of what was going on. They probably still thought I was at the safe house or something.
I activated my comlink
"Guys?"
"Hey Bren." Emma said giggling a little. "Where have you been, we were looking for you." She laughed.
"Yeah bro. Where've you been." Jesse entered the conversation snickering as well. I assumed that something funny was happening. I didn't feel like laughing though. Shalimar was in trouble and as far as they knew she was still missing.
"I'm going after Shalimar." I said. I didn't want to admit that I had temporarily lost her.
"What?" they both choked out, sobering up at once.
"You found her?" Emma said. The rest of the team had obviously had no luck finding her.
"More like she found me. Look. I'll fill you in later. I just wanted you guys to know I wasn't missing too."
"Ok Brennan. Have you seen Adam?" Jesse asked.
"No Dude why?" I asked back. I had just assumed that our leader had been there listening in.
"He took off yesterday a few hours after you did."
"And he hasn't contacted you?"
"Nope. Well I guess we'll let you know if we find anything." Jesse told me.
"I'll do the same. Later." I turned my concentration back to the road. After about 5 or six minutes the dot representing Shalimar reappeared on the screen. Her disappearance confused me, but she was back in my sights now.
After following the tracker for another three hours it finally stopped for good. I drove until I could just see the building on the horizon, it was out in the dessert so I could see it from pretty far away. As I got closer, it seemed to be some sort of old military base. After stranding my car where no one would see it, I walked slowly and carefully towards the outer fence. I found a spot and climbed over. Then as I got closer, there was another fence that was too high to climb and I didn't need to touch it to know that thousands of volts travelled through the bars. There were also guards patrolling the area.
There seemed to be only one way in and that was through the front door. I monitored the gate from a safe distance. Eventually I found my opening. The gate to get in only seemed to let in trucks for supplies and sometimes a guard or two. Any of the guards would obviously recognise that I was not one of them. So my only chance would be to get in with one of the trucks.
When one of them was coming, I tossed a stone at the side of the truck. They stopped to check what had happened, and when they weren't looking, I slid under the truck and held on tight. The men got back in and started moving again. We stopped briefly at the gate then proceeded inside.
When the truck again had come to a halt, I let myself down. I had found a small place for my feet, but the strain on my arms had still been painful. I rolled over onto my stomach and looked out from under the truck.
To the right I could see the loading bay where the men from the truck were carrying crates of who knew what. To the left there were stacks of more crates, that I assumed would be leaving with the truck. Once I was sure the coast was clear, I rolled to the left and ducked behind the stack of crates.
From there being careful to stay out of sight, I made my way around the corner of the building. There I found a back door. Before I went through I decided to notify Jesse and Emma of my situation.
"Hey Jess." Nothing
"Emma?" Nothing again. I concluded that the base had some sort of signal jamming device. They would have to find their own way there.
I gave the control panel a quick zap from my finger and the door opened. I glanced inside looking both ways down the corridor. The coast was clear, so I went inside closing the door behind me.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Jesse:
After finishing breakfast, Emma and I picked up the clothing that covered my bedroom floor. Then the two of us set to work trying to find out anything about the Strand that might lead us to their hideout. Although from the brief conversation with Brennan, it seemed he already had it under control.
He was following Shalimar. How, or why escaped me, he had been very vague with the details. She might lead him to the strand or who knows where, especially if she was under Ashlock or Will's control.
After a few hours with no results I was stressed out.
I was leaning back in my chair after another failed attempt to hack a Genomex facility when I heard static on my com link. I looked over at the psionic on the couch confused. It hadn't been her. A few seconds later she got a weird look on her face then looked at me with the same confused look I must have had on my face.
"Brennan?" She stated more than asked to not just me. Hoping he would answer, if it was him.
"Hey Brennan. Is that you?" I asked. The coms were silent once again. I spun around back to the computer. "I'll trace his com link signal." I tapped into the com system in the computer.
Emma moved across the room and leaned over my shoulder to see better. "Are you sure it was him?" she said right by my ear. Her warm breath was extremely distracting.
"I am now." On the screen was the status of our three missing friends' com links. "Shalimar's and Adam's are both disengaged and Brennan's is active, but it's not transmitting."
"Maybe he's unconscious." She suggested.
"That still wouldn't explain why I can't trace it." I sighed in frustration.
"Here let me." She draped herself over my shoulders and started typing. "If we can find the last place it transmitted from. Then maybe we can find Brennan." She explained, her delicate fingers flew over the keyboard and her chin rested on my shoulder. "Here you go." As she spoke, I could feel the vibrations from her voice box and I could still feel her damned breath on my ear. I wondered if she was aware of how she was effecting me, or was her torture unintentional. "The last place it shows here is a little past where he contacted us this morning."
"Ok so what could have happened?" I thought out loud. "I'll try pulling up a virtual simulation of the last 15 minutes before his com stopped transmitting. Speed 60 x normal should be good enough. It might give us an idea as to what happened." Emma moved her hands away from the keyboard to let me try my idea, but she stayed behind me wrapping her arms around me instead of typing.
"Ok." She pointed to the screen. "He stopped here for a little. Maybe we should check it out."
"Yeah. Lets go." I was glad for a chance to get outside. I didn't want to be stuck inside sanctuary all day. Also being that close to Emma I feared that nothing would get done.
When we got to the location, it turned out to be a café. I asked the woman behind the counter if she had seen Brennan. I held up a photo of him.
She shook her head. "No I just got here an hour ago."
"Are you sure there's no one else here who might have seen him." Emma said hopefully. I could tell she was reading the woman behind the counter.
"Look sweetheart. I'm sorry, but any employees on staff that would have seen him have all gone home." I put my hand on Emma's shoulder. I could sense that she was feeling helpless, worried and frustrated. It wasn't that hard to figure out because I was feeling the same things.
The two of us started to turn away and the woman spoke up. "Wait a second." I turned around. "There is one person but it's a long shot." We both nodded enthusiastically. "Ok. That man over there," the woman pointed to a small table at the back. "He sits here all day sometimes, maybe he was here this morning when your friend came through."
"Thank you so much." Emma waved back to the woman as we made our way over to the small table in the back. As we got closer, the man put his coffee down.
"Excuse me sir." I said. "Were you here this morning around sunrise?"
The man nodded. "Yeah. I was here. By the way call me Greg"
Emma smiled and held up the photo of Brennan. "Did you see this man come in here this morning Greg?" She sounded hopeful.
"Yeah." Greg looked us over. "Are you guys detectives or something? Cause you sure don't look like it."
I was a little bit taken aback by his question.
Emma opened her mouth to say something but I cut her off. "We can't really answer that question, but anything you can tell us would be a big help." I tried to make myself sound like one of those detectives you see on TV Emma caught on immediately and started looking around the room as if anyone there could be a suspect.
"Was there anything about this man this seemed suspicious to you in any way?" she asked with her back facing the two of us. Trying to look inconspicuous.
"Um. Well. He had a palm-pilot or GPS thing that he kept looking at the whole time he was here and he looked like he hadn't had any sleep in 2 days." Greg answered just as I had wanted him to. By letting him think that we were detectives, he thought he was doing a service to the public.
"Thank you. That information could very well help us find him." Emma and I turned to go. "Goodbye Greg."
Discouraged that we had found nothing, we headed back to sanctuary.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Robin:
"It doesn't make any sense Robin." Adam said. "Shalimar, really." I had just told him what I had seen two days before.
"Yes Adam. I'm absolutely sure it was her." We were in the same warehouse we had been at just a few days past when I had given him my prophecy.
"Ok tell me exactly what happened." He said crossing his arms.
"Three days ago Gabriel had me find info that he would be meeting someone at a warehouse, so I passed the info to you. I really thought I was helping, but he used me to get to her. I'm so sorry Adam. If I had known, I never would have betrayed you. The next morning when they took her, they brought her back to the old base of the GSA." I told him.
I looked to Adam and he nodded in understanding. So I continued. "When one of the links told me that we had captured one of Mutant X's members, I knew that Gabriel had used me. I went to see who it was, and to see if I could do anything to help them escape." I looked down at my hands. I couldn't look him in the eyes.
I continued again. "I heard someone say that "She wasn't talking." So I knew that it was either Emma or Shalimar. As I got closer to the lab where they were holding her, I heard more and more about what was going on. They were questioning her."
I looked up and I couldn't read the emotion in his eyes. He didn't say anything so I looked away and started talking again. "I was almost there when one of the links walked past me holding a bloody cloth to his face. I heard him say, "The blond bitch broke my nose." So I knew it was Shalimar because I had met Emma already and she's a red head. What I wasn't ready for was…" I couldn't think of a way to put it. "She was the one in my vision, the blond one."
"Ok" He seemed to be working things out in his mind so I decided to keep talking and tell him about what I was supposed to be doing right now.
"Some one caught me watching as they questioned Shalimar. He took me to Ashlock who told me that I was going to lure you to our new base. He said that I should tell you that we are going to break in but actually bring you to him instead."
"Wait a second." Adam said. "If he knows that you know he used you, why would he expect you to do what he said?" he asked I was glad to have distracted him from his thinking. Let him think about that once we were done with the Strand.
"He threatened Will. I guess he didn't factor in that I would figure out that it was Will who had betrayed you before I did." I frowned slightly. "I should have known from the beginning that he was working for Ashlock. It's just like him, work for the highest bidder, good guy or bad guy. It doesn't matter to him."
He put his hand on my shoulder. "It's hard sometimes to see the bad in the ones we love." There seemed to be more to what he was telling me, but I didn't understand.
"We need to come up with a plan." I said. He seemed to think for a moment.
"Ok I've got it."
xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Shalimar:
It was disgraceful the way I acted and I couldn't believe I wasn't slipping up. I followed Ashlock around like a faithful little puppy dog and I loathed myself for letting him kiss me the way he did. No self-respecting woman would let him treat her like that. I did, but my intention was not to show my self-respect. I had to play along as long as possible to give information to my team.
I couldn't slip up lest the lives of my friends be forfeit or even my own if I could withstand whatever torture they inflicted to get information from me. What was I going to do? I was so tired and sick of patient zero. I wanted to rip his throat out if it would stop his horrible speech about how we were going to crush mutant x.
When we had arrived at the new base he escorted me to a room where he gave a speech and as his newest speech came to a close, he pulled me into a hug and kissed me. The thought of it alone made me sick but there was nothing I could do. I couldn't lose my cover when I was so close to finding out why I was so important to his master plan whatever it might have been.
Of course all of the links cheered, although not many of them knew what the plan was, they all knew I was important to it. If Ashlock had me under his control, he were going to succeed in whatever task he wanted. I pitied most of them because they had no idea that they weren't really that important. They were completely expendable to patient zero, every last one of them.
I hadn't seen Robin yet, but I would have liked to talk to her. I knew that her brother had betrayed us, but I trusted Adam's judgement. I knew that Brennan after getting back to sanctuary had most likely gotten into a fight with Adam over that exact topic. I had guessed at Adam's opinion of her by the small clues that maybe only I had picked up on.
His temperature rose a little when he talked about her, he breathed a little harder too. Yet his reaction had only been for Robin and not her Brother. He had feelings for her. Adam was usually a pretty good judge of character so I believed that she hadn't meant to betray us. If I could find her, maybe she could help me get out of the new base. I didn't know my way around any of the back halls or anything.
We were walking down one of the main hallways toward a dining area and my thoughts stopped all together for a second. I sensed something. It was something I was used to but I wouldn't expect it here. It was there. I was sure of it, a smell completely unique to one person and one person alone. There was no way it could be though. I took a deep breath and tried to find it again, but it was gone. Brennan. It couldn't have been. He was back at sanctuary, waiting for my call. He had to be. The lack of sleep was getting to my senses.
Ashlock and myself were sitting down to eat lunch and a one of the links came in the door of the private dining area.
"Excuse me Sir. M-m-Mr. Ashlock s-s-Sir." The nervous young man stammered. "There's a call for you." He looked down at his feet.
"Ok." Ashlock turned to me. "Go on and eat without me. I'll see you later. Why don't you have a look around and get acquainted with the base? I'll be in my quarters if you need me." I couldn't believe it. He was giving me free reign to explore the base and I definitely planned on taking full advantage of it. After contacting the others of course.
When I finished eating. I left the dining area and left to explore the base. I found a safe place to contact the others and activated my com ring.
"Hey guys." I said. I couldn't wait to hear their relieved voices.
Nothing. I waited a few seconds and still nothing.
"Anyone?" I asked. Something was very wrong. "Somebody?"
I was so wrapped up in trying to contact the others, that I didn't sense the men behind me before they grabbed me. I estimated at least four of them. I could take them. I struggled a bit and almost had myself free when I felt a sudden stabbing pain in the back of my neck. It was a subdermal governor. Even though I had never had one before, I knew immediately what it was. I couldn't fight back as five more links joined in the effort to drag me away, one of them taking my ring.
"I knew she was up to no good." I heard one of them say. "I told him, but he wouldn't listen." The voice I recognised as one of Ashlock's higher officers. "Lets take her to him and see what he has to say now that I have proof." The man said. I knew then that I was in trouble, deep, deep trouble.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
TBCOk I am so very sorry that this chapter took so long. I blanked out for a little bit and I started reading this really awsome series of books so I feel really bad about being slow.
(loveconqures: Thank you for your permission to do that stuff. I love your stories so much. Ps. canI put walt whitman quotes at the end of my stories too? it's just such an amazing idea.)
