A/N: So sorry for the long delay in the posting of a new chapter. Things are really tough right now. But I'll try to at least start back writing when I get the time. Hope this new chapter is worth the wait.
The Assignment
"You have one hour to kill five persons, all at present located in completely different parts of the world. It must be done without anyone even knowing that you were there. You will be a ghost. If you have not completed your mission in the allotted time, 100 mutants will die. If you are spotted, another 100 will die by my hand, if you should try to contact anyone, especially your X Geeks I will kill 5000 of the mutants in the worst possible way. Do you understand your mission?"
Rogue looked at the maniacal smile on Lilly's lips and she sincerely wished that the bitch would actually catch some loathsome disease and fall down dead.
"Do you understand the mission, Rogue?" she asked again.
"Yes," Rogue asked coldly. "Who do I have to kill?"
"Ah ah ah," she chided, wagging her finger at her. "Don't want to spoil the fun, now do we? You will be given your target and the method in which you must kill them at the time that I deem it necessary. For now, suit up! You're heading out in five minutes. Remember, one hour, Rogue. And no communication! You are aware that I don't like to be crossed. The consequences you will not like."
Rogue growled low and deep, her teeth pulled back in a snarl.
Lilly punctuated her words with a smug smile and a blast from the collar.
The jolt didn't even faze her. Defiantly, she growled even deeper.
Lilly, obviously in a forgiving mood, let it slide as she walked briskly out of the room.
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It's amazing how easy it was for one to lose one's scruples and morality when the life of literally the world was held in one's hands.
Rogue looked down at her hands.
They were clean.
They bore no evidence of the atrocities of the acts she had just committed.
But in her mind's eye, she saw them covered in blood. Their blood.
She had just cold-bloodedly taken the lives of four human beings and one mutant.
She bowed her head in shame.
'How could I have done it?' she asked herself.
She had believed herself so morally strong. She had believed that she had been capable of standing up against her. Of taking a stand for righteousness. But she hadn't. Lilly being the predator and goddamned bitch that she was she actually found a way behind her defenses.
She remembered the first one.
He had been right in the heart of New York; in his penthouse suite, totally surrounding by security. And she'd walked right past them.
Invisibility. Mariah.
She'd walked into the man's bedroom. Watched as he berated one of his employees over his mobile phone. Watched as he disrobed and walked into the bathroom. She watched as he came out. And still she hadn't been able to do it. Even after she'd seen him take out the file of the woman he had slated for assassination. A woman that was a single mother to two gorgeous children.
But she hadn't been able to do it.
She had been about to walk away.
And just like that in her mind she could see Lilly there, casually chatting with one of the terrified mutants. One whom she had seen on more than one occasion. One whom she believed may have had a chance. She was fourteen years old and she'd been taken from her home. Her parents had known that their daughter was a mutant and had loved her still.
Rogue remembered the tape that Lilly had shown her of the child's mother's grief when she had discovered that Lolita was missing. She'd updated her as to the continued search for their daughter. And Lilly being the sick individual that she was had commented on the fact that she had actually sending the parents a picture of what their daughter looked like now, after a year of imprisonment in hell. The bitch had just wanted to see if she could twist the knife a little more.
And then Lilly looked at her in her mind. She could hear her plainly as if she was right before her.
"You finish the mission, I'll let her go home to her mommy. You don't, and she's the first casualty. Simple. His life or hers."
And then the vision was gone.
And with it the pain of the decision she knew she had made.
And so she took her first life; of her own free will.
She became a cold-blooded murderer.
It wasn't like the other times when she had been forced to absorb the others. The hundreds that had now taken up permanent residency in her head were all put there by others. Forced there by Lilly and her minions, while she lay strapped, unable to move.
Now she had made a conscious decision to take a life.
And with it another part of her soul died.
And she wondered at the end of it all, if there would be any of her soul left.