Gemini had finally forced herself to stop worrying about the children, and to focus on her own part in the mission. Whoever had murdered the two dead conference speakers was obviously very good at killing, and stopping them would take her full concentration. Could it be a mutant who was responsible? Gemini knew only too well that there were mutants dedicated to the destruction of peace. She'd been one herself once. Or was it a human? There was nothing to stop a human being an effective assassin, albeit with many years of experience and training. Did it even make a difference which it was? An enemy was an enemy, regardless of what they were capable of doing. Someone who was doing wrong had to be stopped, regardless of how powerful they were. Just trying to do the right thing was more important than actually succeeding. Wasn't that right? Wasn't that what she'd read in the Bible?
Her mind was wandering. She had to stay focussed. The rest of her group had moved on without her, and she hurried to catch up. All of the conference speakers were being put up in a luxury hotel paid for by the UN, which made it easier to protect them as a whole. Scott had assigned them to patrol the area of the hotel where he considered an attack to be most likely.
"Hey, kid – are you with us or what?" asked Logan as she rejoined the group.
"Sorry, I was just – thinking."
"Glad we've got your attention," he said dryly.
Cassie smiled at her friend. Accel was leaning against the wall, sighing with boredom every few minutes. When she was told that she'd be helping out on a mission, she'd been overjoyed and hadn't stopped chattering about it to anyone who would listen. Now that it was actually happening, she was beginning to realise that it wasn't going to be action and excitement from start to finish.
"When's something going to happen?" she eventually asked impatiently.
Logan glanced over at her, then away again. Children weren't his strong point, and he wasn't pleased at the idea of having to "baby-sit" a ten year old. Privately he wasn't entirely convinced by Gemini or Cassandra either – they were, after all, just seventeen year old girls – but at least he had seen them fight and he knew they could be left to take care of themselves when it came to the violent stuff.
Cassandra had answered the child's question, "We hope it won't, honey. Remember, we're not looking for a fight. We're here to keep these people safe."
"But this is boring!"
"It's still important. We're protecting people who want peace between us and the humans."
"I know – Mr Summers told me. Only he used ten times as many words."
Logan suppressed a chuckle. It wasn't just him who found Scott a pain in the ass.
"Who are we fighting against, though?" Accel continued. "Mr Summers wouldn't tell us that."
"Well, we don't really know," said Gemini.
"Are they mutants?"
"We don't know."
"I guess they'd have to be. Like, sub-creatures would be too stupid to – humans! I mean humans!"
Her cheeks went red and she looked away from them. She'd been yelled at several times by the teachers for referring to humans as "sub-creatures". It wasn't her fault – that was just the way they used to talk when they were on the island. But adults never listened, they just shouted.
Logan was half-heartedly considering telling her off, and was just about to decide that he didn't really care, when he suddenly sensed that something was wrong. He sniffed the air. The hairs on his arms were beginning to rise. His animal senses were screaming that something was amiss.
Gemini noticed, "Logan? What is it?"
"Quiet!"
What the hell was it? The corridor was empty, apart from them. All the windows had been securely barred. There was no way that anyone could be –
Then it hit him. He stared up at the ceiling above his head. A tiny ventilation grille, barely a foot square, was directly over him. That was where it was coming from. The smell, the sound, that only his animal instincts had been able to detect.
"There's someone in the vents!" he hissed.
The girls immediately ran to his side.
"How is that possible?" Gemini hissed back. "I thought Scott said we checked the vents! And they were too narrow for even a kid to get through!"
"It must be a mutant," said Logan. "Damn it, there's a ventilation grille in every single room we've got a speaker in! He could be headed for any one of them!"
"What do we do?" Accel gasped. "How do we – ?"
"If you all shut up, I might be able to listen!" he growled.
They shut up. He strained his ears, trying to pick up the faint sound he'd heard earlier. His eyes suddenly widened and he pointed, "That room!"
Accel got there first, but Logan pulled her out of the way, "Get out of the way, kid! Stay behind me!"
She was about to argue, but suddenly there came a terrified scream from behind the door.
"Damn it! Sometimes I hate being right!" Logan snapped.
He kicked at the door, but it had been reinforced against potential intruders and refused to budge. His claws snapped into action and one swipe made short work of the door. Shouldering aside the remains, he charged into the room. His heightened senses and hunting instincts took in the scene in an instant. On the bed lay one of the conference speakers, a small grey-haired man. On top of him, in the process of throttling him to death, was a figure dressed entire in tight black leather.
"You picked the wrong people to screw with," Logan snarled, advancing with his claws out.
The assassin's head suddenly snapped round to face him. He could see now it was a woman. Beneath the black cat-suit, only her eyes were visible. Her reactions were instantaneous, letting go of the old man, who collapsed on to the bed, gasping desperately for air. In the same second, the woman back-flipped into the air from a kneeling position, landing perfectly on two feet. Gemini moved forward to help Wolverine, but Logan pointed at the speaker, "Watch him! I got this one! Cassandra, go get Scott and the others!"
That was the last chance he had to issue any orders, as the woman in the cat-suit suddenly launched herself across the room at him, her hands reaching out to grip his throat. He'd seen it coming and was already moving to counter-attack, dropping on to his knees and rolling underneath her, then thrusting both sets of claws up into her stomach. She screamed in agony and kicked out at his face, managing to pull herself free from the claws and staggering away.
Even as she did this, Logan instantly knew something was wrong. It took him a second to realise what it was. His claws had gone right into her, but there was no blood on them. As she regained her balance and came towards him again, he saw there were no wounds on her body either. This wasn't good…
Her fist shot out with impossible speed and cracked him on the jaw, sending him reeling backwards. Before he could do anything, he saw two identical figures running towards her. The Gemini twins acted in perfect concord as they attacked the woman, one holding her attention while the other struck from behind. She was fast though, unbelievably fast, and with a spinning kick she sent one twin slamming against the wall.
"Kid, I said cover the speaker! This one's mine!" Logan yelled.
Gemini shot him an angry glare, but backed off and allowed him to charge the woman. She seemed off balance; her head was probably still spinning from having to keep track of the twins. Logan deflected her clumsy punch with one arm, then drove his forehead into her chin with a satisfying metallic clunk. It would have knocked a normal person senseless, but she was obviously trained to handle pain and after stumbling backwards a few steps she regained her poise.
"Mr Logan!" Accel cried from the doorway. "Let me help!"
"Shut up, kid! Stay there!"
The female assassin sprang towards him again, this time turning a complicated mid-air somersault that allowed her to slam both feet into his face. Logan was knocked to the ground as she landed on her hands and flipped back upright. He jumped back to his feet and held his claws out aggressively.
"OK, I am now officially pissed off," he spat. "You've asked for this."
"You have no idea who you're dealing with," she hissed in return, her voice muffled through the air-filter of her cat-suit. "You should give up now while you're still breathing."
"I've faced better than you and not even broken sweat," he taunted.
She laughed harshly, "It's that kind of over-confidence that makes you people so pathetically easy."
It was only momentary, but her laughter had dropped her concentration for a second and Logan made a lightning charge in her direction, thrusting both sets of claws directly into her heart.
"Try that for pathetically easy," he snarled.
Screaming in agony, she gasped, "Don't mind if I do."
In the next instant she was holding a tiny pistol in her left hand, aiming it at his head from point-blank range. His instinct was to block with his claws, but he couldn't eject them from her body fast enough, and two bullets smacked into his temple. Logan slumped backwards lifeless, his claws retracting into his knuckles and his body hitting the floor.
"Logan?!" Gemini shrieked.
Was he dead? Could he heal from that? She knew he'd been shot before, but what about in the head? So focussed was she on the fallen Wolverine, that she hadn't even noticed the woman. Gemini had assumed that Logan had stabbed the woman fatally, and within seconds she would join him in lying unmoving on the floor.
"Like I said, pathetically easy," the woman sneered.
Gemini looked up in shock. The assassin wasn't on the floor dead, or even writhing in pain. There was no visible sign that she'd been stabbed at all. In fact, she was laughing as she stepped easily over Logan's body. The conference speaker was still cowering in terror on his bed, and Gemini instinctively moved both of herself in front of him.
"Get out of the way, little girl," the assassin mocked her. "You don't need to die like your boss there."
Gemini stood her ground defiantly. The woman was still holding the gun, and Gemini was frantically trying to calculate if she had enough time to attack before the woman could fire a shot. Her duality usually gave her the advantage of surprise when her enemies were first faced with it, but that had been wasted now. She knew she had hesitated too long. She should have acted. It was too late now.
"OK, maybe you do," the woman sighed.
Raising her gun, she fired at the nearest of the two twins. At the same second, the other twin was running towards the speaker, grabbing him and forcing him on to the ground behind the bed, hoping it was solid enough to provide some cover. The bullet smacked into the chest of the decoy twin, killing her instantly. Gemini screamed as she shared her double's pain, and collapsed on to her hands and knees, on the verge of blacking out.
"No…" she gasped weakly as she saw the killer marching over towards her.
"So weak," the killer sneered again.
Then another voice screamed, "No!"
Before she knew what she was doing, Accel found herself charging towards the assassin. In a fraction of a second, the girl was already moving at speed, ploughing into the woman, her enormous momentum carrying the two of them across the room. In their path lay the room's only window, reinforced against potential invaders, but no match for the force behind Accel's charge. The glass shattered, and then there was nothing underneath them. Accel suddenly screamed in terror as she realised she was plummeting several floors to the ground below.
In the next second, three different things happened. Logan's healing power forced the bullet out of his forehead, and his eyes snapped open. Gemini overcame the agonising pain to struggle to her feet. A group led by Scott suddenly appeared in the doorway.
"What's going on?" Cyclops demanded.
"Accel!" Gemini screamed. "She's gone out the window!"
"What?"
"Icarus! Icarus!"
"Yeah?" came the kid's voice.
Gemini thanked God that the young boy was among the group standing in the doorway. She grabbed hold of him and frantically pointed toward the window, "Go! Accel's falling!"
"Go!" Scott echoed.
The boy whooped with excitement and ran towards the window, leaping through the hole in the glass that had already been made. His arms shot out and came together in a perfect dive, increasing his downward velocity. Below him he could see two figures helplessly flailing down towards the ground. The smaller had to be Accel. Using his power, Icarus changed course slightly to head straight for the girl.
The next thing Accel knew, a pair of arms suddenly grabbed her around the waist, and her plummet towards the ground was now developing into a smooth and graceful descent. Instinctively she grabbed at the person holding her.
"Boy, you're heavy," Icarus grunted.
"I am not!"
Finally getting their descent fully under control, Icarus brought the two of them to rest gently on the ground.
"Thanks," she gasped, as her brain at last caught up with what had just happened.
"What happened?"
"Tell you later; where is she?"
The woman's body was lying on the ground a few yards away. Accel hurried over to get a closer look at their enemy. She'd seen dead bodies before, so she wasn't completely unprepared for the sight. Despite that, the girl still found her stomach churning with nausea as she laid eyes upon the body in the middle of the car park. The woman had landed on her back, her neck twisted to one side. Her left arm was bent at an angle it probably wasn't meant to reach.
"Gross," Icarus said.
Accel was about to agree with him, when something caught her eye. At first she thought it was her imagination when she saw the woman's arm moving, bending back to the correct angle. But then her legs started to move as well, and the woman in the black cat-suit got to her feet. Icarus backed away in shock, but Accel stood her ground.
"Freeze!"
Both Accel and the woman turned in surprise to see a group of men with guns pointed directly at them.
"Kid, step away!" a voice called. "It's all right, men, the little girl's with the UN team!"
Accel obeyed, stepping out of the line of fire. The woman turned, and ran.
"Fire!"
Bullets pinged through the air in the direction of the fleeing woman, but her escape was unchecked.
"Call for back-up! Get a chopper in the air!"
Accel clenched her fists. This was no good! The bad guy was getting away! None of the men were chasing her! Fine, I'll do it myself! From a standing start, the child began accelerating after the woman. It took less than three seconds for her to catch up. The woman must have heard her footsteps, as she turned and used a word that Accel had only ever heard Vertigo use before, then snapped, "Don't you know when to quit?"
The tiny pistol reappeared in her hand, and she aimed directly at the onrushing child, squeezing the trigger. Accel dived to one side and rolled over, the bullet avoiding her by inches. This was it! This was what she'd been waiting for! The chance to use her powers for real instead of just endless training sessions at school!
They'd reached the exit to the hotel car park, where a small security hut had been set up for the duration of the conference. Two men were crouched beside it, both armed with pistols.
"Freeze! Get down on the ground!" one of them yelled.
Accel panicked for a second, but they weren't talking to her. The woman aimed her own gun at one of the men, forcing him to dive headlong to avoid being shot. The other man fired in return, but she dodged his bullet easily and wrapped one arm around his neck, snapping it cleanly. Before the second man could get up again, she slammed her heel into the small of his back, pinning him to the ground, and shot him in the back of the head.
Terrified by how easily the woman had just killed two men, Accel hesitated. But not for long. This was her job. She was here to stop the bad guys from killing people. She started running after the woman again. A black van suddenly pulled up at the entrance to the car park, the doors at the back being flung open. Without stopping, the woman leapt inside, and the van began to speed away. Accel didn't stop, putting her head down and pushing herself to the limit. The van was accelerating away into the distance, but she was already closing the gap. It was midnight and there was very little traffic, but the few cars that were around were screeching to a halt at the sight of the ten year old girl catching up on the van.
Her muscles pumping, her blood feeling like electricity, Accel felt more alive than she had ever done in her life before. Up ahead, the van must have reached its top speed because it had stopped accelerating. If Accel had a top speed she didn't know what it was, and she was now only yards away from the vehicle. One of the back doors was still hanging open, and she could see two or three people inside, their eyes gaping at her with astonishment. The female assassin was one of them, and she pointed her gun at Accel. Nothing happened. It must have been empty. One of the figures beside her reached behind him and grabbed for something else. By now Accel was a couple of feet away and she made a grab for the van door, missing it by inches.
The man in the back of the van, wearing a white body suit and smirking at her, had picked up a machine gun. Accel suddenly realised she was about to die. She couldn't dodge that many bullets! She veered away from her pursuit of the van, desperately trying to get out of his line of fire. Running on to the other side of the road, she narrowly avoided a car coming the other way, its horn blaring furiously at her. She heard the roar of the machine gun, heard bullets hitting the road behind her, and kept running. She was exhausted now. She'd never tried to catch up with a vehicle before, and hadn't realised how quickly it would sap her stamina. Another car swerved to avoid her as she had to come to a halt, exhausted and breathing heavily. The van disappeared into the distance as she dropped to her hands and knees, panting and dizzy, on the verge of blacking out. She was still in the middle of the road, and an onrushing car had to swerve out of the way to avoid her, its horn blaring loudly. In desperation she tried to summon the strength to crawl to the side of the road, but couldn't do it. Accel felt herself slipping away, and then she lost consciousness.