Sinister Secrets
Part 2
Logan paused before relaying the mental command to Creed. Something on the wall caught his eye. Stepping further into the small chamber, Logan turned slowly in a full circle. Amid the equation were diagrams, a female form laid out as a Da Vinci model. Arrows pointed here and there to parts, areas were circled with notations as to something being located there, an apparently random string of four letters. "A", "G", "C" and "U". Logan bit his lower lip as Creed began to carry Kylie from the chamber.
Finally, he made a snap choice. "Creed, get her back to Xavier. In the Blackbird. I'm going for Carnal."
Creed only grunted, holding Kylie's head against his shoulder protectively. Within moments, the big mutant was long gone, and Logan remained alone with the formulae. He didn't know all that much about what he saw there, but he prayed, that what he suspected wasn't true. Putting out a mental call for Jean, Logan jumped back through the hole in the mirror, and headed off in the opposite direction Creed took.
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Kitty Pryde was upset. Mostly because she was being forced to work with Avalanche, but her surroundings made things no easier on her. According to the directions that Jean was relaying to Storm, their new shapeshifter friend was locked away down in one of the many tunnels connecting the various buildings of the complex. Ororo was beginning to get uneasy; her claustrophobia was fighting valiantly against her leadership skills. How deep did the tunnels go? Just how far down was the laboratory located? And just when would Jean, Cyclops and Wolverine join the expedition?
Moments after she wondered it, a side-tunnel disgorged Jean and Cyclops. They had been running full tilt, and skidded to a stop slightly out of breath. Lance scowled beneath his face-shield. The other Brotherhood mutants were no longer dogging their footsteps.
Jean took a few moments to catch her breath, before waving everyone forward again. "Let's keep moving, we don't have any time to waste."
Lance's mouth popped open for a smart-alecky remark, but Kitty shoved her elbow hard into his ribs, forcing him to dance aside with a muffled curse. Glaring at the petite brunette as she jogged past him, Lance continued to mutter under his breath, and finally dogged after the X-Men's footsteps.
Ororo was struck with it first. The floor seemed to tilt beneath her feet; her head spun violently out of whack. She tried to put one foot before the other, but the floor shifted again, in the other direction, and she went down, hard. Barely catching herself with her hands, Storm tried to shake the dizzy spell off. But a string of confused cries caught her attention, glancing back, Storm witnessed as all the teens swayed on their feet, some falling, some catching themselves on the stark metal walls.
"Did you really think you could just waltz in here and take the prize?" The voice was sarcastically feminine, bouncing off the walls so it seemed to come from all around them. "It's amazing what a little technology will do…"
A trio of figures shimmered into view. The speaker stood at the forefront, her hands on her hips. Her hair was a myriad of shades, ranging from gold to green in stripes and swirls and patches. Her eyes were indefinable, as any attempt to meet that gaze was met with another wave of vertigo. One of the two men flanking her held a small box, which began to shift and change before their confused eyes. Where he had held a box with dials a moment before, the man hefted a large submachine gun the moment after. Though his face wore no expression, his eyes held a smirk of triumph. The final man was small, dark featured, and glistening with a sheen of sweat. He laughed.
"Hit 'em again, Vertigo.. I like watchin' 'em fall," came the grimaced remark. Vertigo joined him in laughter, and raised a single hand toward the fallen X-Men.
Storm had shaken her head somewhat clear, and saw the threat impending. Flinging her own hand out, she adjusted the air-pressures in the narrow corridor, to create a gale-force wind, aimed in the trio's direction. The sudden gust swept Vertigo off her feet before she could use her powers, while the two men hunkered down with their arms before their faces. Miraculously, they withstood the blast, by only being pushed backward a few feet.
The submachine gun rattled loudly in the hallway. It fired not bullets, but searing points of energy that hit the walls and melted right through the metal and stone. Nightcrawler vacated the vicinity in a flash of light and sound, while Kitty lunged forward to grab both Avalanche and Storm, phasing them both out before they could be hit. Jean protected Cyclops with a telekinetic shield, causing a few of the energy projectiles to rebound away.
Nightcrawler reappeared beside the man with the gun, and quickly grabbed the barrel of the weapon. "Auf Wiedersehen!" he quipped with a cheery wave, before teleporting away once more, removing the entire gun from the man's hands.
"Riptide, get them!" The man snarled taking a full step back. He lowered his hands to part of his armor, and the metal began to ripple and reshape beneath his touch. The woman was shaking off the gale-force blow, and she waved a hand in the direction of the X-Men.
Another debilitating wave of dizziness rocked through them all. Jean wavered in mid-air, and Cyclops was only just able to catch her. Kitty cried out, and fell atop Storm, while Lance dropped to his knees. Kurt popped in, and popped back out just as fast, leaving behind him a stench of brimstone. He popped up behind Vertigo once more, and did the first thing he could think of. He grabbed her multi-colored hair, and yanked as hard as he could.
She let loose a screech, and swung an elbow in his direction. Meanwhile, the man called Riptide had spun up to full power, literally. His body was a blurred vortex, leaving only his head visible above the tornado's top. Suddenly, things began to fly out of the vortex, sticking into walls with heavy-sounding thunks, and whizzing past ears and bodies quicker than could be seen.
One grazed across Avalanche's shoulder armor, leaving a deep gouge in the metal. His eyes growing wide with mortal terror, Lance dug down deep inside him and twisted his fists in the air. The earth began to rumble, the floor started shaking. Kitty cried out.
"Lance, don't!" She grabbed his arm, breaking his concentration. "You'll bring the whole place down on top of us!"
Growling, Lance shook her off, and redirected his efforts. The techno-master nearly had his second weapon completed, so Avalanche pointed his fist in the man's direction, and sent a shock-wave of force to knock him off his feet. Once he was down, Storm stretched out a hand, and called a lightning bolt out of thin air to incapacitate him. The thunder in the closed space was nearly deafening.
Vertigo was reeling from Nightcrawler's constant teleporting. The stench was almost enough to make her gag, but it was the hair-pulling that infuriated her. The thunderclap left her ears ringing savagely, and she was unable to pinpoint Nightcrawler's next teleport. Kurt appeared right beneath her, and hit her with a teeth-rattling uppercut.
Riptide was still laughing. "Get that close to me, and you'll get cut to ribbons!" He spun towards the main group of mutants, flinging a volley of knives from within the vortex. Cyclops managed to spear most of them with his optics before they reached anyone, but when he turned the ruby blast on the actual vortex, it reflected, punching a divot in the metal wall nearby.
Kitty almost screamed as a pair of arms scooped her up from behind. "Let's go, half-pint," Logan growled right in her ear. He was sprinting right for the swirling vortex of doom, with Kitty tucked securely beneath his left arm. She acted reflexively, phasing both of them insubstantial.
With a roar, Logan jumped into the vortex to confront a startled Riptide. Once inside, he dropped Kitty so that he was solid once more. As she began to sink out of sight, she could see the flesh of Logan's arms getting torn to shreds, but not before those claws had unsheathed right into Riptide's guts.
Kitty re-emerged from the floor, breathless, in time to watch the vortex disappear, and the dark man to drop solidly to the ground, a pool of scarlet spreading from his back. Wolverine's arms were already healing, the slashes and cuts puckering together into pink scars, which just as rapidly faded into nothing.
Cyclops never figured he'd have been so happy to see the man in his life. But Wolverine wasted no time in greetings, as he leaned down to pick Storm back up to her feet. Swiveling slightly, Logan jabbed a thumb at Jean.
"Make sure they ain't wakin' up anytime soon," he ordered before continuing to stalk down the hallway.
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She had never been more terrified in her life. She was tied down, humiliated and spread-eagle upon a cold metal slab. Two men constantly circled her; they both watched her carefully. One possessed slanted, almond-shaped eyes, and skin that was more yellow than her own. His clothes were crisp, and clean, and smelt freshly laundered. Well, she had been able to smell that, before he had touched her. The contact between his skin and hers had been agony, as though everything in her body had wanted to shut down all at once.
And no matter how hard she tried, she could not get her hands to reshape, to slim out, so she could escape these bonds. She could not smell the fresh soap, or the antiseptic of the clean room. Nothing worked. That scared her more than the array of cutting objects that lay close by her right side.
The second man was more frightening in a way. He wore a perfectly white coat, his hair was cut the perfect length to accent the widow's-peak descending his forehead. A small mark lingered between his brows, like a scar, in a perfect diamond-shape. The second man's eyes shifted constantly between different screens located on the farthest wall of the chamber.
"Threnody, tell me my Marauders have succeeded?" he asked suddenly, of a cloaked figure seated before the monitors.
The figure shook its head. "Arclight still follows the one who stole the Prophet. Riptide, Vertigo and Headhunter have all fallen."
The man snarled. "Send in Harpoon, and Blockbuster. I want them stopped."
"Yes, Lord Essex." Threnody nodded slightly, and leaned over the keyboard.
Essex paced once more, between the monitors and the table. Once by the table, he paused and reached out to run a pale hand along Carnal's cheek. "I only have half my answer," he purred softly. "But perhaps that is enough…"
Carnal could only whimper as he lifted the first of many implements from the tray beside her.
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"This intersection isn't part of the map," Jean muttered peering left, then right down the two forks before her. "It's supposed to continue straight ahead, for at least another hundred yards." A dark line appeared as her brows knit together. She hated thinking that they had been duped, when Tradys had seemed so sincere.
Cyclops followed Jean's gaze down both forks. "We'll just have to split up." He decided. "Storm, take Avalanche, Nightcrawler and Jean up the left fork. Wolverine, Shadowcat and myself will take the right fork. Keep an open channel, Jean, we'll call if we find anything."
The redhead nodded, her lips pursing as she wished Cyclops to be careful. With a slight laugh, she figured that he was in good hands, with Logan to protect him, and Kitty to keep his spirits up. Storm nodded and motioned for Lance to follow after Jean. The Brotherhood boy cast a furtive glance at Kitty, but found she ignored him like always.
With a huff, Avalanche set off after the other three members of his impromptu group. And shoved all thoughts of stupid mundane life into the back of his head.
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Sabretooth was being followed. And he couldn't do a thing about it. He had known of his pursuant since he kicked down the front door of the building, and burst into the forests dappled sunlight. He had to keep Kylie safe, that was his first, and all consuming thought. She was so small and light, that he could cradle her against his chest with one arm, allowing his other free to push aside branches and protect her head from the few he couldn't get in time.
And he ran. As fast as his long, loping stride could take him, he ran. The runt had told him to bring the girl back to the X-Men's jet. Creed knew, reluctantly, that, in the presence of the telepath, would be the safest place for her. Suddenly, out of the forest before him, was something blue and furry, and nearly as wide as Creed himself.
The Beast. Hank McCoy. Creed pulled up short, before running the blue furry one over. Both of his hands curled around Kylie protectively, as Creed struggled to regain his breath. Beast glanced into the forest behind him, expecting a hundred demons on his tail. He was rewarded in the moment of silence, with a tremendous crash and the splintering sound of a felled tree. Creed felt his lips twist into a wry grin.
"Look…" Creed began, gently disengaging Kylie's death grip from his neck. "Get her back to Cue-ball. I'm gonna take care of that jabroni, quick and get back to ya."
There was almost a reverence in how Beast took the girl from him. Something in the way Creed had been holding her hinting at the preciousness of this particular cargo. Once she was secure in Beast's arm, Creed reached out once more to smooth a stray curl away from her face. He scowled as he turned away slipping away into the forest like a ghost.
Beast turned as well, and carefully carried the girl back toward the Blackbird. Her fingers reached up, wrapping into the thick fur that covered his chest. She struggled to open her eyes, but they showed only white upon each of her attempts. Beast tried to talk to her, to soothe and relax her, as he made his way up the ramp of the jet.
"Don't…. let 'im.." She rasped out at one point. "Death… darkness… everyone.. sick… Stop Legacy.."
"Stop what? And who, child?" Xavier inquired as he rolled into meet them in the Medbay. Beast shook his head, she had lapsed into unconsciousness again. Beast began to bandage her hands and fingers, while Xavier settled in to set up the other monitors. He brushed her forehead with his fingertips, trying to soothe her.
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Creed took to the treetops. The massive pines didn't really afford him good cover, but he figured whoever dared to follow him wouldn't be looking up. Or expecting an attack from above. It didn't take him long to spot him. Or rather.. her. She was probably about Creed's size, with a rippling wall of muscle, and barely any hint that she was female. She sported a mohawk nearly a foot tall, and had apparently felled nearly a half dozen trees with her bare hands.
Creed's lips twisted into a grin as he prepared for a delicious showdown. Mentally counting to three, he then launched himself from his branch with a roar. The woman looked up at the sound, and an expression of sheer surprise passed over her features, right before Creed hit her full force with both fists.
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"Pan the Prophet's cell again. There must be something I am missing." Essex snarled as he leaned over Threnody's chair once more. His hands were stained deep red, causing Threnody to lean slightly away from him. Her fingers were thin and reedy as she stretched them forth from the cloak to turn a dial and thumb a switch. The main monitor showed a slow pan of the blood-writing scrawled over the walls of the cell. Quietly to himself, Essex mumbled softly.
Threnody's eyes watched the other screens as well. She watched Arclight's battle with the massive mutant known as Sabretooth. She saw Blockbuster and Harpoon engage the would-be rescuers, but furrowed her brow at two other monitors that showed nothing but static.
"Lord Essex," she whispered before me moved away. A wavering gesture at the two monitors brought Essex's attention to bear. He scowled. "We are being approached," Threnody murmured, as she hit a few buttons and called up other camera views. As she had feared, around a nearby corner, three figures emerged, after a momentary brilliant ruby flash, that screen as well, went to static.
"Lower the blast doors, Threnody. No one can get to my little virus lab." As the lab was cut in half by the foot thick walls of steel, Essex straightened his lab coat, and stepped back. "Threnody, Scrambler, they are all yours."
The Asian Scrambler glanced over as Threnody began to get up from her seat. When he glanced back to ask Essex one more question, he found the good doctor had melted into the darkness.