"What exactly is the point of all this?"
The Director sat behind his desk, fingers steepled against his chest. "I would think that our agenda is obvious, but I'll enlighten you: it's clear that mutants aren't going away any time soon. If anything, there seem to be more of you every day. I aim to find them and utilize their abilities to do things ordinary humans cannot."
Teva stared at him. She no longer felt fear in his presence, even if she was prevented from attacking him. He just didn't engender any emotion in her. "You make it sound altruistic."
He smiled, the feigned mirth not even reaching his cold snake's eyes. "Oh, surely not. We cater to the highest bidder. After all, the original aim of the Program was creating supersoldiers – it's where Captain America came from." His hands lowered. "Make no mistake, we are in the business of making money and controlling mutants who must not be allowed to roam free. No sense in not using them."
She didn't really care one way or another, though some part of her felt as if she should care – and should be outraged. Apathy was a powerful leveler, though, and it colored most of her thoughts of late. Any time she tried too hard to break past it she found herself unable to, with a raging headache for her efforts.
The only other emotion she ever felt was rage – mostly directionless save when she was anywhere within smelling distance of Victor Creed. The feline feral took entirely too much pleasure from trying to piss her off and, to be honest, he didn't have to try to hard. Thoughts of killing him and making him suffer ran deep in her, deeper than the apathy, touching some part of her that hurt whenever she tried to look at it. There was something profoundly wrong inside her but she didn't know what.
Training sessions let her release some of that pent-up energy, the tension that knotted between her shoulders and the base of her skull. After her discussion with the Director she met Deadpool in a room that passed as a gym.
"Heya, Red," he greeted her. He had a 9mm in his hands, fingers expertly checking the clip and then the chamber.
"My name is Teva," she shot back. "Echo, if you must." It was the codename they'd given her, a reference to her mimicking ability. She hated it, the same way she hated the sense of déjà vu she got with every training session, as if she'd done this over and over but couldn't remember how many times, or when, or where. Had she ever had another life?
Deadpool shrugged. "I got nicknames for everyone." He was relentlessly cheerful, probably because he was insane. He set the gun down and then removed his other firearms, followed by the two katana.
"No weapons?"
Another shrug. "They wanna see if you can take me down with what you mimic off me."
She frowned. "And you're okay with this?"
"Already had someone try something similar. He couldn't quite get it, though, 'cause I'm crazy. Even I don't know what I'm gonna do from one second to the next." Clever hands opened the release on his main weapon harness, tossing it to join the rest on the table. "You didn't do so bad the first time we met."
Memory boiled up. "You were distracted by my tits." Her clothing now was black with grey accents, fitted like a second skin so that even if she wasn't flashing cleavage it was still damned obvious she was female.
He grinned. "They're nice tits, babe." He crooked fingers at her, Matrix-style. "Let's see if it's still a problem."
Without warning she moved forward, already reaching out with her psi and finding what she was looking for. She no longer required an empathic bond with her donor; now it was as simple as establishing contact through telepathy, the briefest touch, though her use of the mimicked ability wasn't always strong. With each successive attempt she found she had more control and more finesse.
Wade's mind was slippery, his unique brand of crazy making it difficult to hold on. She knew better than to attempt any psychic attack on him but, even with his healing factor, he wasn't immune to physical attacks.
Teva felt herself fall away, gave herself over to the pattern of hitting and dodging without trying too hard to direct it. She'd had a bad habit of over thinking, of putting too much thought into how she moved, so that she was always half a step too slow, her strikes evaded and her dodges failing. It hadn't been until she began training with Wade that she began to understand going on instinct.
No, that's not true, a small voice in her mind said. You knew about instinct, you'd just never had the ruthlessness to use it so easily. The voice had a slight growl to it, sounding more like Creed than she cared to admit. Now it's you and not just a part of you.
Wade blocked her strike and forced her back, his moves no longer a blur to her. She saw it all in stark clarity, even as she defended, losing ground but only taking half of his blows instead of all of them.
And she noticed he tended to go left more often than not, the only slightly-predictable thing he did; nothing else had rhyme or reason to it.
She let his next punch almost connect, coming so close and moving so fast it ruffled her hair. She grabbed his arm and let his own momentum pull him into an arm lock behind his back. If there hadn't been nearly a foot of height difference between them he could have slammed the back of his head into her face but the disparity also meant she couldn't get her arm around his neck, either. Instead she hooked his leg and pulled, sprawling them both on the floor.
Wade bucked up, loosening her grip and lashing out with a kick that snapped her head back. The next kick would have taken her in the stomach had she not rolled away, flipping backwards and then back up onto her feet. He gave her no time to relax as he moved in hard and fast, catching her in the mouth and splitting her lip, pushing her until she was nearly swaying with fatigue.
As quick as it began it was over. Wade stepped back with his hands held at his sides. "You're getting better," he praised her with a grin. "And the healing factor is responding quicker than before."
Teva nodded, swiping at the trickle of blood down her chin. All the little wounds and bruises were already gone, though the memory of pain lingered. "Still not good enough to take you."
"The only person 'taking' him is me." Copycat crossed the floor to lay a possessive hand on Wade's arm.
The redhead cocked her head to the side. "I may not be good enough to best him but you're nothing." The blue shapeshifter missed no chance to press her claim on the merc, no matter that Teva had never so much as looked at Wade as anything but a teammate. "Perhaps you should remember that, little girl."
Only Wade's grip kept Vanessa from hitting Teva while the girl spat expletives at her. Teva couldn't find it in herself to care and walked away.
Her exit was barred by the massive frame of Sabretooth.
"My turn," he said, his voice a dangerous purr. He moved forward, pushing her back towards the mat. "If you're done with the idiot, that is."
Vanessa protested. "He's not an-"
"Shut up." Teva heard Victor say it at the same time she did. She spoke by herself when she said, "Take her somewhere else, Wade, or she's going to get hurt."
The blue shifter tried to protest again even as Wade collected his arsenal and dragged her away.
Teva turned back to look at Creed, knew her face echoed the annoyance on his. "I'm assuming no weapons for you, either."
The big feral grinned. "Built-in, sweetheart. But let's make it interesting." He leaned past her and flicked the light switch, plunging them into darkness.
"I can see as well as you."
"Yeah, but can ya fight as well?" The direction of Creed's voice told her he'd moved away, behind her.
She wasn't afraid. Her senses were as good as his, eyesight and smell and hearing as keen. He wouldn't be able to surprise her, even if he could move near silently.
There was a sixth sense, too, that of presence, that she felt. It wasn't really psionically-related; baseline humans had it, some kind of throwback to when the race hadn't been apex predators. She knew when Creed was less than a foot away and moving fast.
She couldn't hit him the way she'd hit Wilson. Both men had healing factors but Creed had adamantium grafted to his bones; any face hits would hurt her more than it would hurt him.
There was also the fact that his reinforced skeleton meant he struck with more force, breaking bones more than he left bruises unless he checked himself. She knew he wasn't going to do that.
At the last moment she dropped, felt him pass over her. She grabbed his hair in one hand and kicked him in the face with her steel-toed combat boot, twice before letting go and dancing away from a swipe of claws. It wasn't likely she'd done much damage but healing factors only healed, they didn't do jack or shit for pain. And a boot in the face hurt like a bitch.
"Caught me," Creed allowed. "Point for you." He was on her, then, leaving slashes down her back in bright stripes of pain. She tried to slip away from a backhand but only succeeded in lessening the damage. Her jaw exploded in pain, almost but not quite breaking. She found herself on the ground, breathless, watching him stalk away.
He was playing with her. He could easily take her down without killing her but he was every inch the cat, teasing his prey and enjoying the fear.
But she had none. Not even with the niggling memory that she'd gone up against him before, won once and lost another time.
Teva waited for him but he wasn't going to come after her again. She closed her eyes, sought with her other senses and launched herself at him. He let some of her hits connect, taunting her the whole time.
"Part of ya remembers," he said, swatting away a punch. "Done this before but ya don't know when or where."
She kicked him again, caught his knee and earned a grunt of pain rather than a busted joint.
"Part of ya knows what I did to ya. What I took." She could hear the grin in his voice. "And ya hate me even though ya want me." He grabbed her from behind, held her tight against him while she struggled. "Scent don't lie."
"Not gonna happen," she ground out, stomping on his foot.
He just laughed. "I could just take it, like I did the last time." His head dipped, his breath ruffling her hair. "Might be worse for ya if ya got off from me raping ya."
Memory exploded and so did her head, pain making her spasm in his grip. Pain blossomed in her hands, too, and she heard Creed curse as he jerked away and let her go.
Teva opened her eyes, looked down at her hands balled into fists. From the backs of each of her hands, just above the knuckles, came three blades of pure blue psionic energy. It hurt worse and felt better than anything, coursing through mind and body like a high. She laughed and lunged at Creed.
He grunted in pain, trying to stay away from her claws, apparently well acquainted with the damage they could inflict. He actually cried out when she clipped his arm.
She ran purely on instinct now. Body memory told her how to fight, how to adapt to using the claws, as if she'd had them forever. It felt good. It felt right.
Creed wasn't exactly afraid but his scent held wariness, caution. He evaded more now than he attacked.
She couldn't put a word to what she felt. Bloodlust, maybe, even though her claws drew no blood, left no physical damage behind. They sank in like real blades and apparently hurt just as bad, judging by his reactions. She heard someone growling and realized it was herself.
Her claws hit him low in the torso, slammed in and she dragged them all the way around to his back without taking them out, then she grabbed his hair again, bringing her knee up into his spine and dropping him. One set of claws punched into his neck, pinning him, the other held just short of piercing his skull.
The lights came on, blinded her to the guards pouring in and pulling her off Creed. She struggled, took out two with the claws before pain once against bloomed in her head. Someone had used her inhibitor to subdue her. The pain in her hands disappeared as her psi shut down.
Creed lay on the floor, unresponsive.
Teva laughed again, triumphant. God, but that had felt amazing. Even with the pain from the inhibitor and the encroaching headache from having her psi dampened, she was exhilarated. Taking Creed down satisfied the darkness in her, the need to hurt. She wanted to do it again.
Instead she found herself in a lab being questioned about what she'd done. They wanted to see her claws, their safety guaranteed by the inhibitor paralyzing select muscle groups. The claws didn't hurt so much emerging the second time. The blue psi blades were oddly beautiful.
They finally released her to her cell where she showered off the blood and ate ravenously before she passed out from pure exhaustion. She didn't even have time to think about what Creed had taunted her with.