Sorry for the delay. As always, not mine. There's one more chapter after this.

-

Ten: My Ticket to Ride

Alison returned to the dorm room sometime that morning, but Kitty had accidentally phased through the electric clock and as a result she had no idea what the time was. Nothing was going her way today. It would have been a poor day for skydiving or street racing – not that she was sure any day was good for skydiving or street racing.

"What's up with you?" asked Alison.

Kitty decided to reply with the old standard: "Homework."

"No, really. I know you don't have any trouble with all that physics stuff. It's totally out of my league, but you're pretty good at it."

"Uh, thanks. Thanks."

"No problem. Now tell me what's wrong."

"Nothing." Honey you should never tell lies or else Mommy and Daddy will know, okay? And we will not be happy. A seven-year-old Kitty Pryde nodded and clutched her safety blanket to her chest. I'll never tell lies, Mommy. "My ex."

"Boy trouble!" exclaimed Alison, as if she were happy. Happy. Kitty frowned. "That's easy to deal with. So who's the hunk?"

"His name is – was – well, his name is Lance and he's not my boyfriend any more. That's what I meant by ex."

"You still really care about him, though," stated Alison.

"Are you a telepath?" was the first thing that Kitty wanted to say, and "Yes, way too much," was the second, but the third time was a charm so Kitty settled on, "How did you know?"

"It's obvious. The way you said his name."

"Would it have made a difference if I spat it?" Lance, she spat in her head. Lance. It never sounded venomous enough. Lance. LANCE. "How did I say it?"

"All wistfullish." There were no words in the dictionary to describe the way she'd said Lance's name, or at least that's what Kitty gathered. "You just said it, you know? Like it's so obvious that you're trying to forget him and it's not working at all."

Dear Professer Xavier… so I think my roommate is a telepath. It's really freaking me out. Help? Regards, Katherine Pryde. No, that didn't sound right. "Thanks."

"I'm not judging you. I know what it's like, babe." The thing Kitty hated the most about Alison was the babes. The babes and the sweeties and the munchkins. The munchkins especially. "Any reason you're starting to think about him all of a sudden?"

"It's not really… all of a sudden."

"Oh. Is that why you've been so miserable?"

"No! What?"

"What what?"

"I'm not miserable!"

God Kitty really hoped this girl wasn't a telepath. "Yes you are. I'm not dumb. You're so miserable. I'm sorry you're so miserable, but I thought you were just homesick. Are you miserable because of this Lance?"

"No!" said Kitty. Her computer glared at her, proffering her unfinished e-mail to Rogue. "Okay, I'm pretty miserable. And I definitely miss Lance. But I'm more miserable because I'm a long way from home and all my friends and no one here seems to like me and all I've got are my studies and I was kind of hoping I could go here and not be a, you know, a mutant."

"Oh. Yeah, I get that." And something in her eyes actually gave Kitty pause. Maybe this wasn't the hand to raise a couple chips, because who knew, maybe this blonde did have trip-aces. (She noted that she sometimes thought like Lance, and it bothered her.) "I… I understand all the stuff that comes with being a mutant. Don't ask me how, but I understand. I know you love studying all this physics and math, etc, etc, this stuff that's way over my head, but weren't you one of those X-Men? It just seems to me like you really miss something. I'm not going to say I know you really well, since that would be, like, a huge lie, but sweetie –" this earned a flinch "– you're not right. You like what you're studying, but you don't like what you're doing. This isn't what you're meant to do. There are a lot of great universities in New York, but you came out here, and for what? It sounds like you're running away more than anything. It sounds like you're afraid you're going to be this person and never change, if you get what I mean."

"Whoa. That was deep."

Alison giggled. "Thanks."

"And I think you're probably right," Kitty continued. "I hate it here. There's all this great stuff and all these great stores, but it seems like I never have any time! There's no one worth dating, there's no one worth talking to – well, obviously there is someone – and I don't feel like I'm doing anything important. I hear all this amazing stuff that's happening back home, and I just miss it, right? I love school, but I hate everything else. I'm starting to think I screwed up."

"I thought so," grinned Alison. "And this Lance. Is he back home?"

"Yeah, and I miss him a lot, but that's not it. I… I miss everything."

"Then why all of a sudden are you thinking about Lance?"

Obviously it was no use asking why Alison knew that she had been thinking of Lance a lot more the past few days. Stupid telepaths. "He's in town. For work."

"Oh? Where's he working?"

"The Hellfire Club," Kitty said, and even she couldn't believe the words had stumbled out of her mouth like two drunk college juniors at closing time from the bar down the street from the football field.

"Ooh, swanky! Is this Lance rich?"

"Not at all. He's… he's had a rough life. He's a mutant." To say the least. "But he's so sweet and so temperamental and so wannabe-tough and he just seems to love and hate absolutely and it's like, my God, I wish I felt as much love and hate in my entire life as he feels in one day! He's a mess. But... Yeah. He's a mess."

"And has he visited you?"

Some broken-off rebel fragment of Kitty laughed. "Uh, not exactly. We didn't end on the best of terms. He wasn't happy that I was leaving, and he had the worst day of his life on the day of my going-away party and missed the party, and then we fought… it wasn't pretty. But I went and visited him and it didn't go well."

"And you're just going to sit there and let it lie."

"That was my plan."

"Your plan."

"It seemed pretty good at the time."

"Pretty good?"

"But in hindsight I see that I made a few, uh, tactical errors."

"Oh yes?"

"Just tell me what you're thinking," Kitty begged.

I think you're an overly emotional idiot. I think you should stop being so pathetic. I think you have no friends and you're lonely. "I think you should pay him a visit at the Hellfire Club."

"Uh, probably not the best idea."

"Right." Alison climbed onto her bed. "Okay. Have fun moping for the rest of your life."

"I'm not moping."

The bed creaked as Alison rolled over to face the wall. "Okay. I'm taking a nap."

"I'm not moping that much."

"Wake me up in thirty minutes, will you?"

"Fine, I'm moping way too much for my own good and I'm completely miserable." Alison rolled over the other way, but the bed didn't creak this time. Even the bedspread liked Alison better than Kitty. "But his job… he's sort of with the government. I'm not sure that they'd like it if I intruded on him. He's only in town for the weekend and he's got a lot of work. So I probably should just stay out of his business."

A staccato raaawk from the bed signified Alison's disinterest. "Wake me up in thirty minutes."

Kitty dropped her chin onto her wood desk and contemplated just sinking into the center of the Earth and disappearing completely. Her pens, neatly arranged in her "Best Camp Counselor 2007" commemorative cup from a summer camp held at the Institute, leered at her, tall imposing figurines imitating those detectives from the film noirs Evan used to watch. This girl, she ain't got no spine. She couldn'ta done it. No backbone, like I said. The clip on the cap of her favorite pen began to turn into a stream of smoke from a detective's cigarette.

"I hate myself," Kitty muttered into the table. The table was silent, but if it could talk it probably would have agreed.

"I can hear you."

"I really hate myself," Kitty said, and not more quietly.

"Oh, hon, don't say that." The fact that Alison rolled over – again – was some success. "You're being a big-time bring-me-down, but you shouldn't start going Nirvana on me. I hate grunge. It's so icky."

It did not escape Kitty that "icky" had used to be in her vocabulary. This did nothing to ease her sense of self-loathing.

"What do you think I should do, Alison?"

"I think you should pick your head up off the desk." That was easy enough. Then: "I think you should go track down this Lance guy and tell him just what you feel."

There was always a catch. "I don't know what I feel."

"Oh, how complicated can it be?" For Alison, it probably wasn't. "You care about this guy. A lot. You're miserable here 'cause you miss home and no one likes you and you feel you're wasting your life. Tell him that, too. You don't have to promise him anything. I just think that if you tell him what you're feeling right now and get it all off your chest and even things out between the two of you, then maybe you'll feel all like…"

"Closure?" Kitty finished.

"Yeah. Closure. You don't need to decide anything right this second. I just think that if you settle things between the two of you, or at least you put it all out there and be completely honest, that you'll be able to move on. Then you can decide if you want to stick with school or ditch it for this hunk back in Bayville."

"What could happen is I go and tell him all this stuff and he thinks I'm pathetic and he's still mad at me."

"Or," said Alison brightly, "you could not go and feel even more pathetic and depressed and so on."

There was only one catch, and that was Catch-22, recited part of Kitty that still remembered her favorite book from her junior year of high school. Either she went and potentially got rejected or she stayed and felt no better than an insignificant speck on the wall. (That's some catch, that Catch-22, whistled the same part of her brain, having teamed up with the ironic portion of her medulla oblongata. Or cerebellum. Whatever it was.)

"One day is fine and the next is black," sung Alison. Kitty was too irritated to be soothed by the fact that Alison had a voice softer than the fur of her uncle's puppy Boston terrier and sweeter than any slurpee Kurt had ever brought home for her. Kitty wondered when she'd started thinking in terrible figurative language. "So if you want me off your back?"

"That's Clash, isn't it? Please stop. I heard Sandinista my entire senior year. Kurt became obsessed."

"Well, come on and let me know!"

"Please don't finish. Please."

Alison's voice dropped, although Kitty had no musical training and couldn't discern the exact change. "Should I stay or should I go?"

"I hate you so much right now."

"At least you don't hate yourself!"

"True." The girl knew her stuff. Unfortunately. Or fortunately. Kitty was finding it hard to decide. She was finding it hard to decide anything. A car was teetering over the edge of a cliff and she didn't now whether to watch it fall or to push it herself. "Fine," she said, and she said it to test if she actually believed it. "I'll do it. I'll go to the Hellfire Club and stick my head in –" literally, she mused "– and say hello and tell him that I want to talk to him. And if he can talk there we'll talk, and if he can't we'll talk after he's done with work. Happy?"

"I never said anything about making me happy," Alison replied with a mystery of a smile. "But you should go. You never know how traffic's going to be."

Kitty shoved her textbook against the pen jar, and if she was nervous before, the fact that she was, in the esteem of the pen jar, the Best Camp Counselor 2007 gave her strength, because if she could deal with a bunch of whiny pubescent mutants without control of their powers, she could deal with a whiny post-pubescent mutant with suspect control of his powers (and his anger).

"All right." Kitty shuddered, stood, and said once more for some kind of luck, "All right," and then walked through the door.

Across the hall and down the stairs, out the door and into the city; lather, rinse, repeat in the cycle of Kitty's college life. She rose her hand as if to hail a comrade, but instead of a soldier she got a cab, but she was happy enough with transportation not to complain.

"Where to?" asked the comrade cabbie.

"Hellfire Club."

"Aren't we swanky." And as she looked at the meter, already close to five dollars as they took a left on Whatever Avenue, a sense of anonymous fear crept over her. She thought at first that she'd forgotten something, and in a way she had. The meter, ever helpful, reminded her that she should've taken the subway.

They swirled into the giant blender that was downtown Chicago. The cab bounced between high-rises and screeched past street-level shops that the average human being would never be able to afford. There was a street that would lead to another street that would lead to West Addison and Wrigley Field, but they did not turn onto the second cousin of West Addison and so continued their slow lurch towards the pit of all human conscience and decency, the so-called home of the upper echelon, the Hellfire Club.

The cab swung to a stop behind a veritable armada of black SUVs, and with all the elegance becoming of his unkempt mustache the cabbie announced, "Here it is."

But that wasn't exactly accurate. It was close to blasphemy to say that the Hellfire Club just was. The Hellfire Club celebrated its existence in a depressingly explosive display of neo-Gothicism, gargoyles and gray stone and everything Dracula would adore. It budged aside its neighbor buildings, the true architectural bully, and said, quite plainly, "I'm here – just try and ignore me! Harrumph!"

Kitty paid the mustache and escaped from the clutches of her metallic yellow once-upon-a-minute-ago comrade. The stairs of marble beckoned all visitors.

One step, two step, three step, four step. Up and up she went, and the doors suffered from no less embellishment. Two gargoyles guarded the entrance with glares uncharacteristic of manmade sculptures. Kitty acknowledged the guardians with a nod apiece, and they made no move to stop her as she swung open the doors and stepped over the threshold.

She expected to be stopped by a clerk or guard or anyone as she walked forward – "Excuse me, miss, but we've been informed that your annual income is less than twenty million dollars…" – but the front desk was empty. She honored the Club by waiting thirty seconds before walking to the elevator and pressing the button with her lowly middle-class thumb. The elevator made no discrimination as the door slid open, and she slipped inside. According to the friendly, sterile steel panel display, she could go up or down, and as a general rule she knew the most important (illegal) activities always took place in the secrecy of the underground, so she directed the elevator towards the center of the Earth.

It was idiotic, of course, that criminals preferred the underground, for the underground had its immediate disadvantages. Yes, there was a certain safety implied by the ten or so feet of dirt, but it also implicated a disheartening lack of escape routes. At least above ground you could keep an eye on the outside world and jump out a window if things got too bad.

Kitty spat out the strand of hair she'd been chewing. Not that ten feet of dirt mattered to her.

Snikt. The door slid open, and she only paused for a moment to wallow in nostalgia. Then she stepped out and left her memories of Logan behind.

A blonde stood at a raised desk. Kitty approached and the blonde quirked what must have once been an eyebrow. "Yes?"

"I'm here looking for someone." She stopped – what was Lance's alias, again? "Uh, Bruce Kent. I think he works here. Tall, long dark hair, early twenties…"

"Yeah, he and Clark went to the restroom a while ago." The blonde pointed her pen down the corridor. "You'll want to check in there. I left my post a minute ago, so they might've come back, but without a reservation I can't let you in anyways. But you're more than welcome to check out the men's restroom. I don't mind."

"Thanks," said Kitty, not sure if the hostess was deliberately being condescending or if it was just in her nature. She headed down the hall, and as she walked the neo-Gothicism slowly faded into a décor worthy of Magneto. Torches transformed into fluorescent lights, and on her left a door had the telltale sign of a men's bathroom.

She pushed open the door and was met with the smell of soap and urine. A man was pissing in a urinal and talking on the phone, but he didn't even seem to notice that a nineteen-year-old girl was observing him. Kitty's eyes involuntarily lowered and she held back a snort. A quick run-over told her that Pietro and Lance weren't in the room, so she shut the door and left the man to his ménage a trios with the urinal and his cell phone.

She was at an impasse, and she decided, with help from her natural stupidity in times of danger, to continue down the corridor. The doors were faceless to her; none was interesting enough to be worthy of two S.H.I.E.L.D. agents.

Until she reached the end of the hall and came face to face with a big bolted door with an eye scanner.

She pressed her ear to the door, but it did not speak. No sounds came from the other side, and Kitty frowned. Lance had never been one for quietness, and Pietro was the type to walk around the block with a boom box declaring his superiority. The quiet was unsettling.

With one glance back down the hall and at her life as a college freshman, Kitty Pryde stepped through the bolted door.

-

The big man was not pleased to be standing over a precocious S.H.I.E.L.D. agent with a handgun. He stomped a brick of a foot down on Lance's gun shoulder, and Lance involuntarily surrendered a shriek. The man pointed a handgun of his own down at Lance's forehead.

"What on earth?"

Lance looked down over the swell of his pectorals. Standing at the door was his equally precocious ex-girlfriend, who seemed to be surprised that she had just stepped into a modern-day spaghetti western shootout.

The man raised his gun towards Kitty, who was staring down the hall, probably at Pietro.

Lance made an effort to free his right shoulder but quickly realized it was no use. He grabbed the gun with his left hand, pointed it upward, and fired.

Red coated Lance's vision, and the man fell over. A hole in his chin dripped blood onto the steel floor.

"My God," Kitty said.

"I know," agreed Lance with equal amazement. "I'm ambidextrous."

"You killed him!"

"Well, it was either him or you, and he's not nearly as attractive."

"Lance, what the hell is going on in here?"

"Doesn't matter right now." Lance scrambled to his feet and grabbed Kitty's shoulder, just to make sure she was real. Satisfied that she wasn't a figment of his imagination, he looked to Pietro. Pietro had taken Fury's advice on human shields and was locked in a shootout with a man just as ugly as Lance's aggressor had been bellicose.

Lance ended it by shooting the unaware hag in the temple.

"Killing spree," he muttered in a video-game voice. He didn't feel any of the accomplishment that came in games. "C'mon, Pietro. We've got a ticket out of here."

"Pryde," said Pietro, getting to his feet. His shield rolled over as it hit the ground, a tangle of arms and legs and bullet-holes. "Never been so happy to see an X-Man."

"We don't want you going out the way you came," said Drew's voice in a burst of static.

Lance mumbled his appreciation. "Oh fuck this."

"We've got a tactical team outside the Club, and they're about to go in," continued Drew, undaunted. "There's going to be cops and S.W.A.T. as well, and officially you guys were never supposed to be here. We can't have lower-level officials seeing you, and the girl just complicates things."

"I assume there's a back exit."

"We've accessed their mainframe, and it appears there is. Continue down that hallway. You'll come to a large foyer with barracks, conference rooms, and other such commodities."

Pietro snapped his former shield's pinky with his shoe. "What is this, a fortress?"

"Yes," said Drew straightly. "Continue past the foyer and there will be a tunnel. We believe they use that for their vehicles. You know how to hotwire a vehicle, correct?"

"You have got to be kidding me."

"I'm not kidding, Alvers. Make sure you bring a couple guns. I'm sorry. We need you alive, but we can't do this the easy way this time."

"We never do it the easy way."

"You're in S.H.I.E.L.D. Get over it."

Lance couldn't argue with that.

"What is it?" asked Kitty, and he realized that she hadn't heard Drew's end of the conversation.

"S.H.I.E.L.D. wants us to go out the back way," grunted Lance. "Something about visibility."

Ignoring the fact we'll be seen by every employee in the Club on our way out, he didn't add.

"And why is that a problem?"

"The back way includes a run through a big foyer with barracks, among other things."

"Oh."

"I hope you know by barracks I don't mean a large housing unit," interrupted Drew. "They have about twenty staff, and there's living space for them, in addition to living space for the upper members. It's not what you're thinking. They're not an army. You've already taken out about eight of them."

"Oh goody," Pietro replied. "And we've only encountered one mutant."

"Good luck," Drew offered. "And don't forget the hard drive."

The communication ended. Pietro, with all the air of a comedian at a funeral, remarked, "I think she cares more about the hard drive than she does about our live bodies."

"I think you're right," Lance said, humorless.

"I can hear you," Drew reminded them.

"She didn't deny it."

Pietro rounded up a load of weapons. Lance took a second handgun and the shotgun; Pietro procured for himself some kind of semi-automatic; and Kitty gingerly accepted a pistol.

"I'm not shooting this thing," she said.

"It's simple," replied Pietro. "You pull down on the trigger."

"I'm not shooting this thing."

"The safety's off. Don't worry."

Despite Kitty's reluctance to accept the gift, Lance noticed that she did not throw it by the wayside. Self-preservation always won out over guilt.

"The hard drive, Pietro."

"Got it." Pietro was at the computers, and then he wasn't. "All right. It's in my pocket. That means that you guys have to protect me with your lives. If I die we lose the hard drive."

Lance smirked and noted, "We could always just carry your body back."

"I was hoping you wouldn't catch that." Something dawned on Pietro's face, a glimmer of sunlight over a valley of stupidity. "Hey, Drew, what if we dressed up as these guards? Would that buy us time?"

"Besides the fact that there are bullet-holes and blood all over the uniforms?"

"Yeah, besides that."

"Sure, why not. Just hurry up already."

In a magnificent flurry of motion lasting somewhere around ten seconds Pietro changed uniforms. He grinned at his slower comrades. "Your turn, suckers."

Kitty hesitated as Pietro threw a female guard's body at her feet.

Lance unbuckled his belt and dropped his pants. "What?" he said, noticing their stares. "Isn't nothing you haven't seen before."

"Could you –"

"Fine, I'm turning around."

And the two honored the statement. Still, Lance couldn't help but see out of the corner of his eye that Kitty faced away from him as she undressed down to her undergarments, as if that really mattered. The only thing that had changed was that instead catching the curve of her breast he caught the curve of her ass, and he didn't mind the difference.

Focus, Alvers. Eyes ahead. Chivalry and other such bullshit.

Lance buttoned up his shirt and picked up his rightfully stolen shotgun. "Done?"

"Yes," said Kitty, and Lance was disappointed to find that the uniform was not low-cut. Pig, he thought in a characteristic fit of self-incrimination. "Let's go."

They had reached as far as the door to the foyer when a guard stepped out from another room. "Hey, I don't recognize you guys!"

Lance hit him in the chin with the butt of the shotgun. Noticing Pietro's frown, he said, "What? We don't have to shoot everybody, you know. Murdering psychopath."

He thought he saw Kitty smile beside him.

Pietro kicked open the door with typical drama. Below them lay the basin of a network of illegal activity – guards rushed from left to right, screaming into their headsets, and a row of cars, ranging from luxury to sports utility, lined the far wall next to the tunnel that would be their eventual getaway.

"Hey," said another guard at the base of the stairwell. "I don't recognize you guys!"

"Not again," muttered Lance, and just as Pietro was about to shoot the stupid bastard in the head, Lance stomped his foot onto the ground and sent a tremor that knocked everyone over. Pietro's bullet missed by three feet.

"Lethal force has been authorized, Lance," Pietro growled.

"Doesn't mean we need to promote it!" Lance barked back. "Go to the car, we'll meet you there."

Pietro didn't waste further time arguing. He'd always been an impatient prick.

The man Lance had knocked over with the tremor was getting up now, and he was not duly appreciative of the fact that Lance had saved his life. Before the man could aim his handgun and fire at the pair his wrist was pierced by a bullet, and he fell to the ground screaming.

"He's not dead, at least," Lance said when Kitty accosted him with a dark look. "Pietro was going to shoot him in the head."

They flew down the steps, but halfway through they were forced to duck as a hail of bullet fire sprayed over their heads. Kitty grabbed his hand and they began to sink through the stairs, until they fell to the ground underneath. Lance could see in between the steps the body of the guard, still writhing around in pain, and he tugged at Kitty's arm. Without words, she recognized his request, and she stepped forward to allow him to pass through the stairs. Still holding onto Kitty, Lance grabbed a grenade off the man's belt, and he passed back through the stairs.

"Phase me," Lance said as he undid the clip on the grenade. Kitty kept her hold on him as he stuck his arm through the wall to his right and threw the grenade into the middle of the foyer.

Five seconds later he was rewarded with a resounding boom. Nodding to his counterpart, they stepped through the wall. Smoke slightly clouded their vision, but he could tell that no one had been hit directly by the grenade, and he felt a hint of relief knowing that.

"Nice one, Lancey," Pietro's voice crackled into his earpiece. "I'm hotwiring a car right now. I've brought down two guys, but I need you to cover me. They've got a mutant."

"Pietro needs us to cover him," Lance told Kitty. "Which car, Pietro?"

"The Aston Martin."

"I should have guessed. Hang on."

Lance knocked over a few guards behind them with another tremor, and together the two sprinted toward the row of cars. A tall, lithe man stomped towards a black Aston Martin, his gun glowing purple. Lance tried to shoot him with the handgun, but the bullet seemed to be absorbed into the violet aura surrounding the man. Seconds later the man thrust out his hand and a bolt of energy seared towards them, only to pass through as Kitty's grip tightened on his wrist.

Dropping his handgun, Lance grabbed the shotgun from his hoister on his back and made a desperate attempt to shoot the man one-handedly. Whether his bullet hit its target, Lance would never know, as the backlash from the shot sent him sprawling, Kitty dragged to the ground with him.

"That was a bad idea," Kitty muttered as she helped him to his feet.

Lance said nothing and was only moderately appeased by the fact that the mutant guard had also been knocked over, but he didn't appear to have sustained any serious damage. The guard rose and began charging up for another attack.

"Jesus," Lance breathed.

Before the man could attack again, there was a flash of black and the man was sent flying into the wall, courtesy of an Aston Martin.

The window rolled down and Pietro's face became visible. "Get in, already!"

Another round of bullet fire punctuated Pietro's demand, and it was only through Kitty's quick thinking and fortunate talent that the two made it into the car safely. Some small part of Lance was sad to see the Aston Martin get pierced with bullets; there were some parts of Dominic he'd never really been able to exorcise.

"The cavalry's arrived," Lance said after taking a glimpse through the cracked window. A group of guards pushed into the foyer, guns in hands.

The car swung into reverse and then, violently, back into drive. Tires squealed as the car began to shoot forward into the tunnel, and a bullet just nearly missed Lance's head and embedded itself into the back of Pietro's seat.

"Alvers." It was Drew. "We've affirmed that the tunnel is self-supporting –"

"And what's that supposed to mean?"

"It means," said Drew calmly, "that you can go ahead and bring it down behind you without endangering civilian life above. S.H.I.E.L.D. will deal with it later. We don't want anyone following you."

"Are you ordering me to bring this place down?" asked Lance.

"In a word: yes."

"You just made my day, Ms. Drew," Lance said, grinning. He faced Kitty. "You ready to phase us if things get a little too heavy?"

Kitty nodded.

"All right, 'Tro," Lance stated as he turned around to face the entrance to the tunnel. "Let's see how fast this thing can go."

"You just made my day, Alvers," Pietro echoed, and the Aston Martin shot forward.

It was difficult to get a lock on the entrance of the tunnel while they were moving farther and farther away, but eventually he was able to steady himself and get a feel for the weak points. In a perfect world, he'd be standing on the ground, but he was well accustomed to a non-perfect world so he made do.

His temple throbbed, and blood filled his mouth as he bit his tongue. For a second he thought he was going to pass out from the pain manifesting inside his head, but he held out, just a moment longer. He thought he felt Kitty's hand on his own, but he wasn't sure.

A second later and the tunnel began to collapse on itself.

Lance opened his eyes, unaware they'd ever been closed. He looked to Kitty, and her hand was now several inches from his own. Her expression was unreadable.

"Shit, Lance," Pietro growled. "Accuracy was never your thing, was it?"

"What?" Lance shot a glance behind them, and he realized that the tunnel was collapsing nearer than he'd anticipated. "Oh. Well. Shit."

"God damn it, why can't this car go faster? And how long is this fucking tunnel?"

"I can try to hold it up," Lance mentioned. "I tried it on that Cuban mission. Didn't work that well, but I can try."

"Well, try, damn it! Make yourself useful!"

In any other situation Lance would have found Pietro's panic amusing, but he was too uneasy himself to fully enjoy the hyperactive anxiety that was so typical of his partner. He focused on the ground and the structure of the tunnel: he tried to will the structure to stay put, but he couldn't tell how much it was working.

"There's too much metal," he grunted. There was no exit in sight. "Damn it, how do we get out of here? I don't see an exit."

"Well, there is an exit," said Drew, sounding uncharacteristically contrite. "But we didn't open it, and now that you've screwed up the tunnel there's no chance for us to open it."

"Oh great," Pietro groaned. "Great job, that."

"What is it?" Kitty asked.

"S.H.I.E.L.D. forgot to open the back door." Lance stopped trying to hold up the tunnel. It was just a waste of effort. "How far are we?"

"About two hundred feet, I think."

"Is it that big metallic wall?" Pietro deadpanned. The metal loomed in front of them, quickly approaching. "Should I slow down?"

"No time for that," Lance stated, gesturing to the crumbling tunnel behind them. He looked at Kitty. "You ready to do this?"

She attempted a smile, but it came out sickly and confused. "Yeah."

"You got it, Pietro. Drive on, you crazy diamond."

"I hate that album," Pietro said as the car made impact with the large steel door.

Or would have made impact, if Kitty hadn't been with them. For an exhilarating two seconds Lance thought he was dead, but then the sun was above them and they were on a quiet stretch of road overlooking a lake. He glanced behind and saw no door, only the stone face of a hill.

"We're alive," announced Pietro redundantly.

The hill shuddered off a mass of pebbles and stones.

"I think the tunnel has collapsed," Kitty said, with equal parts humor and relief.

"C'mon, Pietro," Lance said as he leaned his head back against the seat and closed his eyes. "Let's get out of here."

"Not so fast." It was Drew again, but this time, it wasn't the communicator. Lance opened his eyes and saw Drew standing outside their car, an unreadable expression on her face. "Our agents are going to dispose of this car. In the meantime, I'm going to drive you three back to the hotel. You have a flight later tonight."

"The black SUV? Seriously, Drew, that is so cliché." Pietro hopped out of the broken window and Lance got out, holding open the door for Kitty. "I call shotgun!"

Lance grinned.