A/N: Several people have been PM'ing me recently re: update delays. Please remember that I have school, work, and a relationship / other issues that I am taking care of, not to mention I recently lost my
grandmother and wanted to make sure mom was OK (in addition to getting over it myself). I will continue to update my stories, but they will come as I have time for them. Thanks for your understanding! ~onelildustbunni

( Volume: 4 Arc: "Lost and" 5 Issue: 3/3 )

Chapter 142: found

"We go in…and we don't hold back, got it?" Logan said, tightening a wrist strap.

They were in the X-wing, headed towards the location holding Laura.

Julian had been given a different outfit to wear, a grey and black ensemble with a mask. He didn't give a shit about uniforms anymore. He'd go in his underwear, even. Scott had insisted he
wear it, claiming he didn't want the X-men associated with what was about to happen here.

He wasn't with his team, either. There was Logan, and then some strangers Julian didn't know. Battle-hardened people that had never visited the school before, called in by Logan, when
he'd found out who they were dealing with.

Logan had taken him aside before they'd boarded the aircraft.

"Kid," he'd said.

"Out of my way," Julian had said.

"No. Listen. Once you get on that plane…you can't go back. Let me handle this. What we're gonna do ain't gonna be pretty, and it ain't gonna be somethin' you can ever look back on
and feel okay about. We-"

"They're nothing but bacteria," Julian had replied roughly. "I killed them before, and I wasn't a fraction as pissed off as I am now. Out of my way."

So Logan had stepped aside, with a troubled expression.

…

Down the corridor they raced, flicking away militants like flies. No one bothered to put much effort into it; they were bombing the place after, anyways, with the assistance of Candace Burns,
who had surprisingly volunteered to accompany them. Julian suspected she would be mind-wiped later by Frost, whose expression was odd when she agreed to allow the girl to go along with them.

Odd. He hadn't had such thoughts about what Frost might do before.

He didn't care. All he cared about was that Logan had caught a scent—a whiff of Laura—and they were running along the trail. They'd found many places; Logan said the hallways reeked of her,
even though the trail was only about a day and a half old. She'd been transferred here, then.

Many of the places that smelled like her had large blood stains on the floor.

…

The door finally caved in, under concussive, painful force from Julian's aching brain. Logan was down the hallway, behind him, far behind him.

Julian looked in. The room was lit softly with green light, in the center of which was—was—a tube, full of greenish-clear fluid, and a floating figure, naked, its skin like a giant bruise, some areas
covered in just dark veins, some blotched an unhealthy blackish purple color. Her hair floated above her like a dark plume of seaweed.

Laura.

Tubes were sticking out of her everywhere, and metal rods, like syringes that had been left in. Every limb, every rib, every bump of her vertebrae.

Bubbles floated out of the sides of the mask attached to her face; a breathing mask. Her eyes were closed.

He approached the tube slowly, and reached out; touched it with his blood-covered fingers. He'd done something quite terrible to extract information from a man in a lab coat, with glasses.

Inside the tube, Laura's eyes opened, slightly, and looked at him without seeing. They were bloodshot, with tinges of yellow to the whites, and had dark rings of pink and black around them. They
were swollen, as if she was having an allergic reaction of some sort.

Julian hesitated. Would she die if he released her? Was she on some sort of life support? Not much of a life.

He stepped back and sent a wave of energy up the tube's sides, altering the frequency of wavelengths in the air around them to match those of the glass. The tube shattered with an ear-piercing
noise, and a tsunami of liquid cascaded out the floor.

Laura made a terrified sound inside the mask, her hair now plastered against her shoulders and face. The loss of supporting fluid had brought her to her knees, and she now knelt on the floor of
the platform, trembling and holding her face in her hands so he couldn't see it.

"It's okay," Julian said soothingly, leaning over the edge towards her and reaching out with his hand. She veered away from it and peered at him, one eye visible between her fingers.

"What did they—"

"Like the improvements?" A woman's voice, horribly familiar. Julian turned.

"What the fuck did you do to her?" he demanded.

Kimura grinned. "Nothing you won't like, I promise! Just zooped her up a little, y'know, like a sportscar you get bored of. Like adding a spoiler, really. Except not. Okay, I lied, you're going to hate it."

"WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU DO TO HER?!"

"It's a surprise. Try hugging her."

"…" Julian turned his head slightly, and eyed the rods still sticking out of Laura's huddled form. "You didn't."

"Oho! Kinda, we did, may—" Kimura stopped, suddenly uncertain, as Julian's gaze turned back to her.

"You're dead," he said.

Kimura grinned. "Really? Try me, boy, my skin's unbreakable. You can't hurt me."

Potatoes, Julian thought. Potatoes, at Christmas.

"What if you don't have skin?" he asked, gazing at her, like she was a piece of art he was being asked to critique.

SHRRRIP.

Kimura's mouth opened, but no sound came out. Her skin had fallen to the floor, with a soft noise, like a pile of laundry; her striated, shining muscles were quite horrible to see. A pool of blood
was growing around her.

"Whadddid…" Kimura stared at her muscular hands with visible tendons. They were shaking gently, then more violently.

Julian ignored her.

Laura's eyes closed, her head lolling forwards as she was lifted into the air by the same green light that had caused so much damage; Julian ignored this too, turning his back on Kimura and
heading towards the door.

He met Logan just as the man skidded to a halt at the entrance.

"What—" Logan's mouth opened as he saw Laura. Saw the rods in her body, the same rods he'd pulled out of his skin, about twenty years prior. "Oh, god. NO, no…" his claws slid out. "OUTTA
my way, Keller, I'll fucking—"

"Don't think you can do anything more," Julian said calmly. "But have fun."

Logan peered into the room, and his expression turned from shock to disgust, but Julian was already a distance down the hall, slowly carrying the unconscious Laura. Speed didn't matter
anymore; the damage had been done.