Disclaimer: I don't own any characters except Naomi, Irbis and several innocent short-lived bystanders; everything else is Marvel's only.

Chapter 3

The Lab-rats

When Sabretooth left the facility's main communication centre, he was a happy man. Backups would only arrive well after dawn… and dawn was still four hours away. He had blown the cover of Sinister's mole as well as his head, once he had made sure that Sinister hadn't been warned about the little incident that was currently going on. There weren't any genetic samples from the Naomi girl going around… not even Sinister's mole had managed to send out a sample to his employer. And the same could be said about the low-genes working as lab rats. Yupe, things were going smoothly.

He hadn't bothered to waste time on the results of the experiments going on down below. After all the scientists had been killed, Sabretooth strolled on his way to the elevator. The moment he finished the other-dimension-humans, he'd be able to blow the place to smithereens and walk away. When he got to the elevator, though, he froze. He could smell the track of several people that had used it. Many people.

Without loosing another second, he went down to the last level and ran to the South wing rooms. Several men had been shot and there were also women and children's bodies left behind. Swearing, he ran back into the elevator. The moment he arrived to the first level, he followed the trail out of the complex. Outside, he could smell the smoke of the cars' exhaust pipes in the pristine environment. He had remained almost half an hour with the damned scientists. They could be miles away! He growled, frustrated, and started off on the cars' trail. Fortunately, the jeeps would have to go slowly in the woods. When he got a few miles from the main entrance, he got out a detonator and set off the bombs he had previously planted all over the facility's air vents. He felt the ground tremble under his feet, and swore once more, remembering the runaways. They should all be down there being blown apart into ipsy tiny bits. He set off again at his usual fast pace.

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Almost two hours after having left the complex, Sabretooth found one of the jeeps crashed into a tree. The soldier who had been driving had died with the impact. Scattered around, were other bodies. One teenage girl seemed to have broken her neck when the car had hit the tree, while three men had been shot; one of them was a soldier, the other two were low genes. The humans had probably tried to take over the soldiers, Sabretooth mused, causing the accident. With the accident, the driver and the girl had died. After that, one man had been shot in the back when trying to escape into the woods; the other human had tried to wrestle the soldier with the gun. In the fight, the soldier had got shot but had managed to kill the human; however, he had ended up dieing from blood loss. Nevertheless, two of the passengers were still alive and running around in the woods.

Sabretooth decided to go after the other two cars, which were further ahead, and leave the two low genes for now. After all, they were in the middle of nowhere; they had no chances of surviving. He might as well let the woods do his dirty work for him. And so he moved on.

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Dawn would break soon; Sabretooth could feel it in the air. Some birds were already moving about, getting ready to let out their songs in a chaotic chirping competition among themselves. Sniffing the air, he realized that the two jeeps he had been hunting down had stopped. He could notice the different scents of several people… and he could smell the unmistakable perfume of blood. He moved in, quickly and silently.

Before the birds started their morning racket, he heard them talking, arguing, threatening… There were some bodies piled up near a tree, and three teenage girls were whimpering and being comforted by two women and a teenage boy. One soldier kept warning them not to try anything stupid, pointing at the bodies as an example of what would happen to them. In the pile were the bodies of two men and two young women. Another soldier was having his arm bandaged by a colleague. A fourth soldier was swearing loudly while trying to use the radio; but the darned thing caught nothing but static.

Sabretooth knew he had to be quick. Once the reinforcements arrived, they might want to pull a search-and-recover operation in the facility's surrounding area, and he still had to make the low genes' bodies disappear.

He brought himself as close as possible without giving away his presence… which was very close indeed. He jumped the soldiers in a casual and emotionless way. One hand reached to his left, getting a fierce hold of a soldier's head, his claws easily penetrating his skull; the other hand reaching to his right and another's soldier breast, clutching his claws around his heart. The soldier trying to fix the radio swore and grabbed his weapon, which was on the seat next to him; but his colleague, who had been guarding the humans, was faster and started firing first. However, when Sabretooth had charged he had made sure to put himself between these last two. So when the human's guard started firing, Sabretooth simply ducked a bit, allowing for the soldier behind him to receive a handful of bullets. Then he leaped and landed on the last standing soldier, his right hand crushing the man's windpipe.

The girls and the women had started screaming the moment the shooting began; but they halted themselves once the killing stopped. The oldest looking woman, scared as she might be, tried to talk with Sabretooth in English, but her foreign accent was so strong and her English vocabulary and grammar so broken that he couldn't understand what she was saying. The boy then came to her rescue, although his English was also far from perfect.

"You is… are… You are to save… we? You make we… You make we liberty?"

Sabretooth cocked an eyebrow.

" Liberty? Oh, ya wanna know if I'm here ta set ya free?"

The boy, obviously unsure of what the blonde giant was saying, waved his head uncertainly but hopefully, signalling a "yeah, I think so".

Sabretooth gave them a wide grin.

"Oh, yeah; I think ya could say I'm here ta 'set ya free'!"

He almost laughed, but he had decided to hold himself, as the people weren't particularly convinced of their "saviour's" good intentions.

"Come on, then. And get in this jeep, here."

Sabretooth walked up to the jeep in the rear and patted its hood, but no one moved. Sabretooth breathed in deeply, and gave it another try, adjusting his talk to the people's obvious idiocy.

"You… get… in… the jeep." And he pointed to the car he had in mind. "NOW!"

That got the humans moving. While they decided where to sit, Sabretooth casually threw the other humans' bodies on the back of the jeep. Then he got the fuel gallons that these sort of military vehicles always carry around and secured them all in the one he had singled out. Soon afterwards, he was driving it cautiously back to the other car, which was yet a few miles away. The boy was sitting next to him while the two women and the three girls were on the rear, close to the dead bodies. Although he could still smell their fear, they were slightly more relaxed; possibly because no one had tried to kill or hurt them… yet. And Sabretooth couldn't help but grin.

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The image of the crashed car and of the bodies sent the humans in another fit of terror. Sabretooth rolled his eyes, feeling his patience quickly coming to an end.

"They're DEAD, dammit! It ain't like they gonna get up an' eat ya, is it? Now getta work! Grab 'em by the legs an' arms and put 'em all up in a nice little pile, got it?"

The humans continued to look at the scene with terrified expressions. Two teenager girls started crying. Sabretooth lost his patience. Deciding against wasting time with words, he pulled the boy nearer to a body and made him grab a dead arm, which the boy immediately dropped in disgust. Sabretooth growled at him and again put the dead man's arm in the boy's hands.

"Don't. Drop it. Am I clear?"

As poor as the boy's English might have been, the big blonde's intention was crystal clear, and he held to that arm as if it were his ticket to safety. Now that the boy was starting to behave, he turned to the female part of the bunch and inhaled deeply, trying to get some patience in. He signalled for one of them to come forth. The woman who seemed to be the oldest, probably around her late thirties, got the hint and braved her fear by coming nearer to Sabretooth, shuddering all the way. He signalled her to help the boy, even offering the dead man's leg to her. She swallowed and held it.

"Now, bring the corpse over here."

Sabretooth was now standing near the body of the girl that had been thrown out of the car when it had crashed against the tree. The boy and the woman looked at one another; then they looked at the body they were partially holding; and then they again looked at Sabretooth before looking at themselves a second time. Sabretooth was ready to just finish the whole lot of idiots right there and then, but fortunately for them the awkward pair started to slowly drag the man's body in the required direction.

"I want all them bodies brought ta this place, right here. Am I being clear?"

The boy and the woman stopped their work to look at the fierce looking giant.

"All them bodies, see?" And he motioned his hands around him, pointing at the corpses. "I want 'em all here. OK?" He heard nothing but silence. "I said, OK?"

The darned humans looked around in a doubtful way. The two whimpering girls further off were starting to really annoy him, but the boy came to their rescue.

"Ahhh… The man… ahhh… I… we… go…"

As worthy as the boy's effort might be, the constant stuttering was starting to annoy Sabretooth.

"He…" The boy pointed at the dead man he was holding, but then he changed his mind and pointed at other bodies. "They… go… ahhh" And since he didn't seem likely to find any other fitting word, he pointed to where Sabretooth was standing and repeated himself like an idiot.

"They go…", while pointing to the right spot again and again.

Sabretooth almost roared:

"YES! That's it! They go here! Finally, dammit!" He tried to control himself a bit longer. "Hey, you four back there. Yeah, you. You help them. Got it? You… help… them."

The woman and the three girls started moving ever so uncertainly, but that seemed enough to satisfy him.

"Good. That's it." He turned back to the boy. "Hey, kid. I'm goin' someplace, but I'll be right back, ya understand? I'll be right back. You and yer friends just get the bodies all in a nice pile over there, OK? Bodies go there. And I'll be right back."

Having set them all to work, Sabretooth got into the woods, sniffing around for the tracks of the two that had got away. He followed the tracks for some ten minutes. He noticed the size of the feet and decided that he was following two women wearing some sort of slippers that didn't give much of a protection. One of them didn't seem to be used to going about in the woods, as she made a really easy track to follow: not minding where she stepped, breaking and tossing anything on her way, sometimes slipping or bumping into stuff. The other one, though, was more conscious of her surroundings and made an effort to fit in, avoiding leaving such a track as the most stupid could follow. More importantly yet, this second one knew where she was going. She was obviously the leader of the party; and after a bit of going about almost in circles she had decided to go south… and south she had kept going, with slight lapses quickly fixed.

Sabretooth smiled to himself. Now here was some interesting game. He was going to enjoy hunting down this pair! Feeling satisfied with himself, he turned back to the accident site. The sight of the humans sitting together at a safe distance from the dead bodies all piled together, only contributed for his satisfaction and good mood.

"Well, well! A good job indeed. Now, come ye all here."

Although still being a bit wary of the big man, the six humans got closer to him and to the pile of bodies. Having them all in place, Sabretooth grinned and quickly reached for the older woman's and the boy's necks, breaking them before anyone knew what was going on. The two girls to their right went next, and they hardly had time to let out a yelp. The last girl fell to screaming, without even trying to make a run for it; Sabretooth simply slashed her throat and leaped after the last standing woman, who had tried to run but hadn't got more than a few feet away before he got a hand on her neck, breaking it and efficiently killing her.

"An' ya can thank yer lucky stars I'm in such a good mood ta finish ya all nice an' easy." He told the dead woman's body as he threw it onto the pile.

Sabretooth fixed the recent corpses next to the older ones before going to the jeeps and getting the gallons of fuel. Then he soaked the bodies quite thoroughly. Once the fuel had all been wasted on the dead people, he got out a cigar and lit it with a match, which was disposed of, still burning, onto the soaked bodies. The flames flared instantly, roaring above his head. He idly considered the thought of the human bonfire spreading to the woods, but there had been rains rather recently, not to mention that the grounds were still wet from the melting snow; so he ignored the possible threat and went after the two remaining runaways.