Disclaimer: I own nothing, nada, zip. Blaze owns me

Scene 09

"Pyro, Sabretooth," the voice grated, tantalisingly calm and succinctly evil. "Have you nothing better to do than harass my staff?" The man who spoke stepped out of the darkness, his white face made all the more pallid for his flat red lips and dark circles around his strange, beady eyes. His hair was black-blue and slicked back from his forehead. His nose and jaw line were sharp and angular, like the dark blue suit and short cape he wore in a throwback to Victoriana. Pyro and Sabretooth had no more come back, so they dropped their eyes and scuttled back into the shadows like humbled cockroaches. "Blink," the stranger turned to the teen on the stool. "Shut down that portal, its pulsating nauseates me."

"No probs Mr Sinister," Blink obliged a little too keenly, and the portal was suddenly gone. The adolescent leapt down off her stool and scampered away after Pyro and Sabretooth. To Blaze and Gambit's confusion, Blink called out as she ran, "Hey Mr Creed, wait up!"

"You did manage to get the samples this time, didn't you?" Mr Sinister demanded of Blaze and Gambit. In response, Gambit held up the selection of vials that Logan had given them. Sinister's eyes narrowed as he examined the specimens, but he did not reach out to take them or ask any more questions of his 'staff'. "Very good, take them to Splice in the laboratory to be catalogued. Then go to Shrew and get your target for tomorrow night." With that, Sinister also turned and departed.

It was the first opportunity the X-Men had to get their bearings. Looking about them, Blaze and Gambit quickly realised that there were no windows in this place. The room they were in was built solidly out of dingy brown metal, riveted with massive bolts to a great framework of girders. Being inside this room was like being inside a great metal animal, with the girders like ribs and a smell to match. Light bulbs dangled like drops of saliva from the ceiling, illuminating the room meekly as if the light was afraid of what sulked in the corners. There were doors with small glass panels at eye level, reinforced with chicken wire, and labelled for what lay beyond.

"So far so good," Blaze acknowledged humourlessly. "You okay?"

"Oui bien," returned Gambit. "Some trip huh?"

"Oh yes," Blaze agreed meeting Gambit's eyes and breaking into a small smile. "You could charge for a trip like that in some circles."

"I'll bare dat in mind," Gambit smiled too, but only for a moment. A frown crossed his brow as he asked. "Pyro, Sabretooth an' Shrew, they all Magneto's lackeys. You t'ink he involved in dis?"

"Does Rogue have hair like a skunk?" Blaze replied rhetorically. "'Course he's involved, he's got his sticky fingers in everything. I'd bet that Mr Sinister is running the show though, and it looks like our alter egos work for him."

"What 'bout the kid, Blink?" Gambit thought out loud.

"No idea," shrugged Blaze. "We'd better do as we were told and get Angel's samples to the lab, then I think we should go and have a little chat with our friend Shrew."

"D'accord," agreed Gambit. "You t'ink we can find someone to ask for directions?"

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Discovering the location of the lab took a while. This place was a maze with no maps and no signposts. Within minutes of leaving the room where the portal had been Gambit had lost all sense of direction. He could have been walking in ever decreasing circles and he would not have known. The only reassurance he had was Blaze's insistence that they were not repeating themselves. Concentration was written in the set of her jaw and the lines on her brow, stubbornness in her unsmiling mouth and in her eyes. She reminded him that she had a photographic memory, and that if they had doubled back, she would know.

"I guess it true then," Gambit grinned as he genteelly opened a door for Blaze to walk through. "I be lost wit'out you."

"We're still lost," Blaze pointed out. "I'm just hopeful we're lost in the direction of this lab. None of these rooms are telling us anything about what is going on."

"You mean a lab like dat one?" queried Remy, pointing across the next chamber to a door clearly labelled 'laboratory'. "That'll do me," Blaze decided, going forward and opening the door.

The laboratory consisted of white-topped workbench after white-topped workbench, and beyond them against the far wall was a massive row of glass fronted cold storage units. Every bench was covered in scientific equipment including centrifuges, pipettes, glass flasks and beakers, fume cupboards, soxlets and Bunsen burners. The blue flames on the burners flickered welcomingly as Blaze entered, keen to show the fire elemental what they could do. Blaze had to concentrate on not setting fire to anything, for a change.

By each workbench was a mid-height bench like a pew from a church. Stood on the lower benches so that they could reach the tabletops were maybe a hundred tiny people, all dressed in lab coats and ergonomic safety specs. They ran up and down the benches like monkeys leaping through treetops, with speed, grace and insane giddiness. That wasn't the strangest thing about these mutants. The most bizarre thing was that they were all identical, absolute carbon copies of all the other mini-scientists. Each one was a tiny blonde woman with an oversized head compared to her body, and massive emerald green eyes.

"Clones," Blaze mumbled as one of the women came over to them. Gambit handed over the samples without being asked. The woman sniffed at the vials, holding them up the light. She sniffed again, flaring her nostrils and disappeared in a sea of identical mutants. "This mush be Splice," Blaze pointed out, "She is capable of cloning herself."

"You t'ink they gonna clone Angel too?" Gambit whispered with a shudder.

"Maybe," Blaze replied. "I guess those cabinets are where they are storing the samples from everyone else they have visited too."

"Let's find out, eh Cherie?" Gambit suggested. His eyes fixed on his target; Gambit-as-Ruckus strode across the room to the storage units. He wound between the benches until he reached the cabinets. Then he stretched out a hand to open the refrigerator unit's door.

With a venomous hiss, one of the Splices dived across the room and slammed the door shut again. A rapid and vile transformation streamed over her. She aged grossly in a matter of seconds, her skin shrivelled and hair thinned to a mat of grey wisps. Her nails grew to the length of talons as she somehow released a foul stench that hit Remy in the back of the throat, making him gag. Looking up, the Cajun saw that all the Splices in the room had transfigured themselves, and all were staring right at him with hatred in those surreal green eyes.

"On second t'oughts, maybe not," Remy changed his mind. The idea of being pulled apart by these clones, of them swarming over him like ants, did not appeal. Hastily he made his way back across the room to Blaze, and the two of them moved to the door. "Let's go find Shrew instead, shall we?" Immediately as the door shut behind them, all the Splices changed back into their other form, and went back to work.