A/N: The X-Men are the property of people at whose feet I sit and Marvel. They ain't mine, not nohow.

Ok, so trying to write Gambit's accent is a nightmare. It looks really great seeing it, but doing it myself turned out to be impossible. So I've preserved his speech patterns and you'll have to fill in the rest yourself. Sorry.

Hope you're enjoying the story, folks. :)

Kitty jolted back into consciousness as someone slapped her across the face hard, snapping her head to the side. The force of the blow had caused her to bite her tongue, and she tasted blood in her mouth. The room danced before her unfocused eyes for a few moment before stabilizing. She could not contain her flinch when she realized she was in one of the Institute's interrogation rooms, tied up on the circular device used for questioning. Each arm and leg was tied separately, stretched out equidistant from each other. She smiled as a strange thought struck her mind; her body was, right now, in a posture that was a grotesque parody of an X.

"She thinks it's funny!" a harsh voice grated out, anger seething just under the surface. "We lost friends, *****! Is this funny?!" a fist crashed into her stomach, sending waves of pain through her. Kitty tried to curl up, but her bonds held her fixed in place. She coughed violently, then groaned as another blow landed, and another.

It was two of the guards who were beating her, the young woman realized, mind working even though her body was wracked with pain. If the doctors found out, they would certainly be punished. The mutants were too precious to damage permanently. But these men seemed enraged beyond reason.

After a time, after all rational thought had fled, she realized the beating had halted. One of the men had pulled the other off of her, and they were arguing.

"Come on, man! You know what our lives will be worth if we kill her! They'll skin us alive, man!"

"**** you! She's the reason Trevor and Mitch are dead!" the other one yelled. "She needs to bleed for that!

"She's bleeding already!"

"I want her dead!" the second shot back, un-holstering his pistol.

"Will you ******* cool it! Look, man, we can't do that. You know I'd like nothing more than to throttle the life out of her with my bare hands. But we can't let her get us, too. If we do her, she's as good as killed us. Don't give her the satisfaction, bro."

The second man snarled inarticulately, but jammed his weapon back in its holster. "****!"

"She'll get what's coming to her," the first man continued. "Andras will make her wish she was never born, man."

Kitty saw the second man begin to nod, and then the door opened and another guard came in, moving fast. The first guard looked over. "Hey, Lamont! What're you-"

Lamont drew his pistol in a blur, and as the other two were still staring in shock, opened fire. The second man went down hard, one shot catching him dead center and the next clipping his shoulder and spinning him around as he fell. The first man went for his gun, but only got it halfway out before Lamont shifted targets and put a bullet between his eyes. The man was dead instantly, but it took his body a few seconds to figure it out. His finger clenched in the trigger in a last reflex as his pistol came up, spitting fire. Lamont spun and crashed back into the door as a shot impacted with his side.

Then everything was quiet. Kitty tried to stay focused, but it was hard. She must have broken ribs, at least; she could only hope that none of them hand pierced her lungs. Her vision would not hold steady, it kept drifting to one side or the other, or fading out altogether for brief moments that seemed like eternities. She felt something touch the binding on her right wrist, and turned her head to see the guard who had killed the others removing the leather strap.

"W – why are you – ah – doing this?" Kitty got out, almost blacking out as he worked to bring her down.

"Shut up. It doesn't matter." Lamont removed the last bond on her foot, and then caught her as she fell forward. "You're going to have to walk, Pryde. I can't carry you out of here."

"Scott," Kitty slurred urgently, forcing her bloody mouth to cooperate. "We have to get Scott."

But Lamont shook his head. "Forget about your boyfriend, Pryde. He's not getting out of here. They've got him locked up with Blade. A few hours with her, and he'll be happy to blow your head off for them. Even if he's still himself, which is really unlikely, there's no way we can get down there. Security's too tight. We might make it out – might – if we go now. We try to be heroes, we both wind up dead."

Kitty wanted to ask again why he'd rescued her if he didn't want to be a hero, but decided not to antagonize him. "There's… a way. If you can get me to the… device. I can reverse the flow. Give Scott and I our powers back. They won't be able to stop us."

Lamont shook his head violently. "That's crazy! We go up there, it'll be committing virtual suicide. Didn't I just tell you about security? They're way past paranoid, at this point. We won't make it past the second level."

Kitty doubled over, coughing violently, blood leaking from her mouth to the floor. When the attack had passed, she straightened up as much as she could and looked him in the eye. "You know as well as I do, I won't make it out alive like this. And I'll slow you down, and you'll die too. This is the only way."

Lamont just stared at her for a moment, then laughed silently, looking away. "Yeah, you're right. What does it matter, anyway? We're dead either way."

"Matters… that you tried," Kitty told him, touching his arm.

"Yeah, stow it," Lamont said gruffly. "Come on, we need to move fast." Getting up, he gritted his teeth, the wound in his side obviously painful.

Despite Lamont's pessimistic estimation, they made it to the third floor without meeting opposition. They took the stairwell, Lamont helping her up the steps one at a time. At the third landing, he slipped out first, leaving her leaning against the wall. When he came back to get her, he was limping. As they exited the stairs, Kitty saw two men in black uniforms crumpled on either side of the door, blood pooling under their bodies. "Wait," she told him, and reached down to take one of their guns.

"You know how to use that?"

She checked the clip and clicked the safety off. "Yes," she replied simply.

Lamont paused as they reached a cross-section, peering down the hall to the right. "This is where it gets difficult," he muttered. "Two guards at the door. More inside, I don't know how many. And more nearby, ready to come if needed. Also techs running the machine… armed techs." He looked back at her. "Translation: we're dead."

Kitty closed her eyes and tried to take a deep breath, which only touched off another coughing fit. She fought to keep herself silent, a hand over her mouth. Afterwards, she wiped the blood off her hand onto the wall. "We need to consider this one step at a time. We can take down the guards at the door; you take the left, I take the right."

"And at that point, they'll be waiting for us inside. If we go in, we get shot. If we stay put, they'll call for backup, and then catch us between two lines of fire."

Kitty frowned. What would Scott do? She thought back, and suddenly a memory flashed into her mind; Cyclops lecturing his class in Strategy and Battlefield Tactics.

"Battle is about perceptions and psychology. You need to get inside the mind of your opponent. Figure out what they expect, and how they'll react to it. Then give them something different. If you catch your enemy off guard, nine times out of ten, they will freeze for a second, as their minds try and catch up with things not going as they had anticipated. And that is all you will need."

And more recently "I'll hit 'em high, you hit 'em low, OK?"

She looked up at Lamont. "I know what we need to do."

A minute later, Lamont stepped around the corner, gun raised, and opened fire as soon as his weapon cleared the wall. One of the guards went down, and the other returned fire as Lamont ducked back behind the corner. Seeing a hint of motion a moment later, as if his assailant was moving around the corner again, the guard opened fire at head height, seeking to end the stand-off quickly. He was caught completely by surprise when Kitty slid out from the wall's cover on her side along the ground, firing as she came. He went down before he had a chance to adjust his aim.

"Now, Lamont!"

Lamont ran out at a dead sprint, scooping up one of the fallen guard's headsets. Flicking it on, he spoke urgently into the mike. "We're under fire! Man down! Man down! Get out here now, we need backup ASAP!" He fired another couple of shots off into the air over Kitty's head. "Now goddamnit, now!"

Then, tossing the headset to the side, he picked up one of the guard's pistols, keeping his own in the other hand. Yanking the doors open, he ran inside, roaring at the top of his lungs.

Kitty crawled towards the doors as a series of staccato shots rang from inside, followed, after a moment, by the stutter of automatic weapons. By the time she'd reached the doors, there was only silence. She gripped her weapon tightly, ready for anything.

Lamont stepped out after a moment, tossing his pistols aside. Holding up a hand in front of his face, he watched it for a second as it shook violently. "Didn't even clip me," he said, and then his voice broke and he fell back against the doorjamb, trembling in every limb. He was going into shock.

Raising her gun, Kitty steeled herself, then discharged it into one of the bodies. Lamont started and looked at her, some of the mindless panic gone from his eyes. "You need to get me in there, Lamont."

He helped her up and took her inside, still unsteady. She ignored the bodies strewn about the room. Making him push the body of one of the tech out of the rolling chair in front of the main control screens, she eased herself into it with a pained groan. "Guard the door," she gasped to him. "Just keep them back for a few minutes." He touched her on the shoulder and left.

This, she knew. This, she was good at. Kitty immersed herself in the flow of information, coaxing the program to give up its secrets. Thankfully, it was already logged in, which meant she didn't have to fight past the initial layer of security. But once she figured out where the controls to operate the machine were, and requested an override to flood the area with radiation that would reactivate suppressed mutations, she hit a snag. Any override required supervisor clearance. She pushed past the insistent pain in her body as she worked on convincing the computer she was a supervisor.

Shots rang out at the door, and were returned. Kitty gritted her teeth, focused totally on her task. She could do this, she needed to do this. This was her game, and nobody beat her at her game.

And there… there it was. She hit the request again, slipped past the safety, and hammered home the command. A short tone sounded, letting her know her command had been carried out. A strange sensation flooded through her body, and a violent headache flared into life and then died again just as quickly.

Lowering her arm, Kitty phased it through the arm of the chair.

More shots rang out, and Lamont screamed. Kitty whirled the chair around and saw him fall back, clothing ripped and dark with blood. Boot heels thudded hard outside, and guard appeared at the door. They opened fire immediately.

Kitty smiled a little as the bullets passed through her, inundating the computer systems, destroying them as thoroughly as she could have wished. Getting up slowly, she began to fire as she walked towards them, unhurried, taking her time with each shot. The last two broke and fled, and she knelt down by Lamont.

He was fading fast. His pulse was thready, and his chest rose and fell weakly, a struggle that would soon end in defeat. His eyes fluttered open as he felt her hands touch his face. They stared off into space for a moment, then seemed to focus on her face.

"Shasta? I didn't think you come, little sister." He tried to raise his hand, but was too weak. Blood trickled from the corner of his mouth. His voice grew fainter. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have – have driven you off. I should've been… there for… you."

Kitty stroked his cheek, her throat choked. A tear ran down her cheek.

"Don't cry," Lamont whispered. "You know… I… never stopped… loving y-" He fell silent, and a few seconds later, his chest stopped moving.

She closed his eyes, then scrubbed a hand across her face to wipe away the tears and struggled to her feet. She needed to get to Scott. But as she left the room, something small shot straight at her, passing through to impact one of the doors and explode. Phasing through the explosion, she ducked and rolled, crying out at the sharp pain in her side. She caught a glimpse of a tall, brown-haired man at the end of the hall before she had to throw herself aside again, narrowly evading another glowing, three-cornered throwing star. It was Omega.

She knew what she had to do. She just prayed she was fast enough.

Getting to her feet, she sprinted towards her adversary, ignoring the steady stream of shuriken he sent whizzing through her. She needed to reach him before she ran out of air; he was giving her no opportunity to unphase. Lungs screaming, she flung herself forward as Omega dodged to the side smoothly… but not quite fast enough, as one out-stretched hand made contact with his head… and passed straight through.

Kitty hit the ground hard and painfully, the breath completely knocked out of her. Closing her eyes, she waited to die.

After a minute, she heard a familiar, accented voice. "Kitty?"

Rolling over, she saw Omega looking down at her… but his red eyes were alive once again. "Remy!"

"Chere, what did you do to this thief? I felt… something strange in my head, and then… it stopped. Whatever they put in there to force me to do what they wanted… it just stopped."

Kitty smiled a little, reaching up a hand so that he could help pull her to her feet. "My mutation," she began, and then gritted her teeth until she was on her feet. "I disrupt electrical systems when I pass through them. I was gambling that I'd short out whatever they'd put in your brain."

Remy grinned. "Lady Luck, she still have a soft spot in her heart for Remy."

"Scott's here. They put him in with Blade. We need to get to him quickly."

"Then let's not waste time, chere."