So I was going to post two chapters at once because this one was so low on the Rogue/Remyness, but then the second one I was going to post developed more and became too long so I thought what the heck, here you go.

It was late when the X-jet landed on the Manhattan street, exactly there the Professor had said the distress originated from. The street was empty, as if everyone somehow knew to avoid being out on a night of such infamy. The jet's ramp opened with a whoosh of hydraulics. Cyclops was out first, leading the squad of mutants. They planned on entering the sewers via the subway station, the quickest way to get them all in. As they neared the stairs leading below, a pained groaning caught Cyclops's attention. His visor snapped in the direction of the noise, "It's Evan—he's hurt!"

Remy closed his eyes, jaw tight. He moved back, deeper into the shadows. They would find the Morlocks and Spyke would tell them what he saw. S'all I deserve. Can't ever go back now. He turned to leave but stopped at the sound of a voice, an alto resonance he had encountered for the first time in years just a few hours ago. What had he done? How could she ever forgive him? How could any man make all this wrong right again.

"What happened to him?"

He gripped the railing of fire escape on which he perched. The horror in Rogue's voice was almost enough to make him reveal himself. He could do it, run to them and explain everything, make them understand, tell them why. It took every ounce of self-control to keep his feet planted, his voice mute. He should just walk away, let them deal with the situation. After all, this was the X-Men's forte. They were professionals at coping with such problems. And because of that, he knew they would never forgive him. He had gone against everything they believed, scarified the weak to the strong for his own needs. He was the scum they probably already thought he was. He had to leave—as soon as he could make himself stop staring at her.

Shadowcat found Sarah, lying unconscious against a building where Remy had left her for them. "Oh, girl, look at you," she breathed. "Poor thing." She lifted the girl up and carried her back to the others. "She doesn't look too injured," she reported. "Barely a scratch on her. I think she's just knocked out."

"Take her back to the jet," Wolverine said, after looking over the girl quickly. As Shadowcat retreated he turned to Spyke.

Cradling his bloodied form, Storm gently prodded her nephew towards consciousness. "Come on, Evan," she said, voice thick with worry and trepidation. "You always said you were strong—prove it! Evan?"

He groaned, eyes opening into slits. "S-So many," he mumbled. "Couldn't...couldn't fight them all..."

"Sssh," Storm said, "save your strength for now." Her blue eyes shot a foreboding look in Wolverine's direction. "The Morlocks."

He nodded grimly. "Rogue, Jean, you two stand guard up here in case the attackers return. Cyclops, you and I are taking the others down to the Morlock Tunnels. Storm, take care of Spyke and girl's injuries as best you can. Come on Cyke, prepare yourselves for what you might see." With claws bared, he hurried down below.

Cyclops paused a beat, "What did he mean prepare ourselves?"

"He means this night is just about to get worse," Jean murmured. "Be careful, Scott."

Rogue watched the team head into the sewers. She closed her eyes, remembering a night long ago, another time of fear and danger. Running from attackers with guns. Despite the problems then, she had a single comfort. But not now. Now she only had doubt and suspicion. Along with an odd feeling that they were being watched.

"I wonder what happened," Jean said, breaking into her thoughts. The red-haired telepath stepped around where Evan previously lay, as if she didn't want to be tainted by the splotches of blood he had left on the pavement. She held both hands to her temples and closed her eyes in concentration. When she was finished probing, she shot Rogue a confused look. "Somebody else is here. I've picked up on Evan and Sarah but there's a third..." She frowned, massaging her head. "It's familiar but I can't seem to..."

Rogue looked around the surrounding area, green eyes biting through the shadows with Henry McCoy's heightened senses. "Is it someone we know?" she asked. She knew she had felt someone watching them.

"I'm not sure," Jean said. "The mental signature is so boggled...like it's been changed somehow. I know I've felt this presence before..." She gasped. "He's very close. He's..."

Rogue scanned the windows and doorways of the buildings around them. The street consisted of mostly hole-in-the-wall shops and low-rent housing above them. Nobody seemed to be home anywhere. And then she saw it, a flash of red eyes, but so quick and fleeting that she couldn't be sure she hadn't imagined it. Could it be... It couldn't. There's no way.

"I've lost it," Jean groaned in frustration. "Whoever it was is gone." Suddenly she grabbed her head with a moan of discomfort.

"You all right?" Rogue asked.

"I...I feel Scott. I feel his distress..."

At that moment, Magma blew herself out of a manhole. She landed on the ground, breathless, eyes wide with fear, "Th-there's no one left, uh, it w-was just—just—I've never seen—"

Rogue grabbed her firmly by the shoulders, "Calm down, sugah. What are you trying to say?"

"They're dead!" she cried. "Th-The Morlocks in the tunnels, j-just bodies. Oh, God so many bodies, torn up. I couldn't look at it anymore..."

Rogue wrapped an arm around her, "Go back to the jet. Ah have a feeling the others are going to be coming out soon." She turned to face the tunnel Amara came out of. The last time she'd been in such a place, she had been running for her life. In her memory, she could still trace the paths through the Morlock tunnels.

"Rogue," Jean called, "what are you doing?"

"Somebody's gotta collect the bodies," she said, and disappeared into the sewer.

New York, Metropolitan Correctional Center - The same night

"'The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.'"

Hank pressed the pencil to his mouth while he thought. After a few moments he started writing again, speaking the words as he jotted them down. It was a relaxing pastime of his, and it was great oratory practice.

"'He who overcomes by force, hath overcome but half his foe.'"

The two men in the cell opposite him listened carefully. They had tried to avoid attracting his attention in the last week that they'd been his neighbors. The beast seemed gentle enough with his books, hanging upside down every so often to read, and reciting his favorite prose and poetry. But he was a mutant, and one could never truly know what they could do. They could be hiding any number of abilities. At the moment he seemed satisfactorily preoccupied reciting his favorite lines from Paradise Lost.

The pudgier one of the two men spoke in low tones so the beast would not hear, "So the guard gave me the word."

"Yeah?" the other said. "What's it?"

"Somebody's roundin' up muties."

"What?"

"Keep it down!" the pudgy one hissed. "Goddamnit, man, can't tell you nothin'!"

"Ok ok, so who's doin' it and why?"

"Who gives a shit? I'm tellin' you, it's working. The Friends of Humanity are drivin' those freaks out of dodge."

"To where?"

"Some island by Africa, or somethin' I dunno the guard was sketchy 'bout that. He don't look so smart anyhow."

"So what, muties are just gonna leave the States?"

"Man, you stupid too? There're muties all over the world. And not all o'them are gonna fit on some lil' African island."

"So then what's the point?"

"Friends of Humanity'll take care of the rest. They've already got this guy, see, he's got this drink or whatever he's sellin' to people. Except it's bad for the freaks only. It makes 'em sick, and then it just gets worse."

"What do you mean worse?"

"I look like a scientist t'you? I'm just guessin' it real sick. Hell, maybe it even spreads!"

"Daaang that's crazy!"

"And we missin' all the action right now. But the Friends of Humanity'll get us out."

"Nah man they ain't gonna bother with us. We're just a bunch of grunts for them."

"Whatchu know? They got people in places. They'll take care of their own."

Little did they know, Henry McCoy was not only acrobatically spry, astronomically intelligent, and devastatingly strong, he also had heightened senses and parallel mind tracks. While he continued to recite lines and write them down, he was listening to the goons' entire conversation. "'Do they only stand by ignorance, is that their happy state, the proof of their obedience and their faith?'" he recited, pencil scribbling away.

"One way or another," the pudgy one was saying, "we're not gonna have to look at blue freaks like him anymore. Soon enough, they'll either run away to that island in the boonies or they'll just be gone."

"Gone?" the other one echoed. "What's that mean?"

"Chyeah—whatchu think that means?"

The clang and clack of the jailhouse door opening and closing echoed through the corridor. The police were bringing in another perpetrator. "About time you got a roommate, Beast," the officer said, and shoved a young man into his cell. "Play nice." He locked the cell and walked away, chuckling as though he'd made a clever joke.

Hank was more than a little surprised as he faced his new cellmate. The young man was no longer the tall lanky kid who had caused so much trouble for the X-Men in high school. He had grown into his frame, and after a while serving in X-Corps, had come out looking like a weathered and chiseled fighter. "Why, Lance Alvers. What has brought you to this scenic New York spot?"

Rogue watched the blood swirl down the drain with the water. She always thought it was ironic that blood, which was so necessary for life, meant danger and possible death if it was ever seen, that the color could spark such alarm and panic. And indescribable horror. There had been so many bodies. There had been so many bodies she couldn't even muster up the full force of her powers to make transporting them out of the sewers easier and faster. It felt almost disrespectful, almost like it was treating them as less than human. So she had laboriously helped Logan load every victim into transport. The Professor had phoned the DA John Abernale, who then called in a favor at the city morgue. Thankfully the coroner was far too interested in examining mutant bodies to refuse Abernale's request. He agreed to autopsy them and arrange burial.

Her hands were finally clean of the blood, though they didn't feel like it. As an agent of X-Corps hunting down crime lords and terrorists, she had seen many dead bodies, but nothing like this, never a scene of... of...

"Genocide," she murmured out loud.

Evan and the girl named Sarah weren't the only ones who had come out of the butchery alive. Logan had found Callisto, who was heavily injured but hiding in a hidden alcove of the tunnels with a band of other Morlock survivors. They had almost no information to give, except that their attackers were mutants, and they seemed to have been collecting blood from those they slayed.

"Collecting DNA," Rogue said to her reflection. "Why would they do that? Who are they working for?"

Callisto had declined the X-Men's offer to take her back to the institute. Instead she preferred medical supplies sent to them so she could stay with her people. She also insisted that Evan be given back to them, but the Professor and Ororo had had many words to say about that. As for the bodies of the deceased Morlocks, Callisto put aside her prejudices against top-siders and agreed to work with John Abernale and his coroner colleague.

"Is this at all connected to Shaw and Lorna?" Rogue murmured. "To Remy?" She thought of the flash of red eyes at the scene and shuddered. Had it been real or just a figment of her imagination?

"You know that's the first sign of insanity, right."

Rogue started and spun to face the door, "God, Kitty! You shouldn't sneak up on people."

Kitty walked to the sink beside Rogue and began trying to wash off the night's muck. She too had blood on her hands, and it seemed to disturb her more. Her walk had lost its perky up step, her voice had fewer intonations than usual, and her eyes had a sudden proclivity for looking down. "Why are you talking to yourself," she asked.

"Just thinkin' out loud... You okay, Kit?"

"I don't think any of us are right now. What are we going to do."

"Find out who did this and make 'em pay."

Kitty laughed mirthlessly. It was uncharacteristic of her, cynicism. "And how are we going to accomplish that."

"The way we always do, Kit."

"What, with your bazillion powers. I doubt even you could sweep in and make this atrocity all neat and tidy."

Rogue was taken aback by the bitterness in her voice. She cleared her throat and took a step back, no longer sure what to do with the girl who used to be her best friend. Maybe Kitty just needed someone to lash out at, and why not Rogue, who had treated her so badly?

"I'm sorry, Rogue, I didn't mean that to—to be insulting. I just..." And then she burst out crying. Her chest heaved as she sobbed, burying her face in her hands. "A-And Evan is so close to death a-and Hank isn't even here to h-help him a-and on top of a-all the other bullcrap we have to deal with..."

Rogue felt tears spring to her eyes. It was always hard watching other people fall to despair. She hadn't gotten used to it, no matter how many devastated victims she had seen. It was even harder to see the X-Men, her family, so pained. She blinked the tears back and wrapped her arms around Kitty, letting her cry on her shoulder. "Ah know, Kit. Ah know..."

"We have to stop this, Rogue! W-we have to! T-the world can't be like this? H-how can it keep going like this?"

"It can't," Rogue said, squeezing Kitty tight as she sobbed. "We're going to try our hardest to make sure it doesn't."

Charles Xavier was not much of a drinker. He sat in his wheelchair, still awake and fully dressed despite the wee hour of the morning, staring out the window in his office. He was not a drinker, but at that moment, he reached into the drawer of his desk and pulled out a bottle of single-malt 40 year old whiskey, a gift from Eric Lensherr the day Apocalypse was banished from the world. They had had something to celebrate then, and the relief of those times couldn't allay the darkness of now. No, Xavier was not much of a drinker, but at that moment, it seemed appropriate. He poured himself two fingers and left the bottle on the desk. He took a swig and welcomed the smooth burn in his throat. He thought of his old friend and wondered where he was. For the past two years he had heard very little from Magneto, except for the occasional letter. Eric was so old fashioned, but he was doing well. Xavier had to assume so, since Magneto had been so off the grid for such a long time. Making no waves the way he used to. It didn't feel right... Xavier had the feeling his old friend was keeping something from him. Might it have to do with the 'project' his Acolytes had mentioned all that time ago? But what sort of project required such secrecy, such prolonged absence from the world Magneto once sought to conquer...? Xavier sensed one of the X-Men on his way to talk to him.

"Chuck."

Xavier turned toward the door and gestured for Logan to enter. He tipped his glass at the bottle of whiskey. Logan nodded. Xavier poured him two fingers as well and sat back, "I've been monitoring the situation."

"Then you know Evan's being kept under for his body to heal," Logan said. "We've fixed him up best we could, but my work isn't as streamlined as Hank's. There's no more we can do for him but wait."

"Will he survive the night?"

"Probably. He's a fighter, that kid."

Xavier tapped the rim of his glass, "And we have no leads."

"About that. I went back to the tunnels and took an extra sniff. Found something." Logan reached into his pocket and pulled out a plastic evidence bag within which sat a tattered and stained card. King of Spades. "Personally, I only know of one mutant who carries tokens like this around."

Xavier's frown was dark and grave, "We shouldn't jump to conclusions. There could be any number of reasons why that would be down there."

"I don't much believe in coincidences like this, Charles. Especially not when we had a run-in with him at the fundraiser tonight. And if he really had something to do with all that killing, it's completely abominable, Charles, it's unforgivable."

"He didn't give you away, and he warned you about his companions. He doesn't seem clearly on their side."

"Or ours."

"He did save Rogue's life. She would have fallen to her death because of that collar."

"But what's that prove? Does it give him an excuse to run with a bunch of homicidal maniacs?"

"He was always a tough one to crack, Logan," Xavier sighed. "So many secrets buried in his mind, even things that anyone else would reveal in casual conversation, that don't have to be secrets but he's just that distrustful of people. I could sense it even then."

"No disrespect, Charles, but what's your point?"

"Remy LeBeau is many things, Logan, but he is not a mass murderer. If he was there during the Morlock massacre, then there is an explanation to uncover."

"I don't know about that. If I've learned one thing from life, it's that you never really know people."

"Nothing is certain. But we must not generalize."

"Fair 'nough. I think I should stick around here, let Rogue run point in Mongolia. Should we... tell her about this?"

"Not until we know more. I don't want to trouble her until we have concrete information," Xavier said. "Somehow Gambit is involved in all this, the fundraiser at the Plaza and now the Morlocks. We must locate him. Remember he was one of us for all intents and purposes for a while. I believe if we can find him, we'll be able to reach him. He could shed a lot of light on current events."

"Are you going to try Cerebro?"

"In the morning, yes. Tonight... I believe we all need time to come to terms with what's happened."

Logan finished his whiskey and left the glass on the table. On his way out, "There're lots of pieces here, Charles."

"Yes, Logan?"

"I'm not sure I wanna find out how they all fit together."

"Is that not our job?"

"Sure. But I got a strong feeling we ain't gonna like the full picture."

Lance Alvers smiled, "Hello, Mr. McCoy. I heard you were locked up. You look well, considering the circumstances."

"I've been quite comfortable here, actually."

"What, with those idiots over there as company?" Lance pointed his thumb over his shoulder at the two goons watching them.

Hank shrugged, "I will admit the view leaves much to be desired. What have you done to deserve a room here?"

Lance surveyed the cell and eyed the top bunk. He flipped himself onto it and laid back, stretching out his legs. "I left X-Corps a few days ago," he said. "Went on vacation around Europe for a bit. But it was kinda hard to enjoy myself when it was all over the news: mutant attacks, anti-mutant laws. It's insanity."

"And so you returned to...lend your aid?"

"That's one way to put it. But the police have called it 'vigilantism'. I have a feeling the Friends of Humanity have some of the cops in their pocket, otherwise why would they arrest me for defending some mutants from being attacked on the streets they're supposed to be keeping safe? It's like a war out there. If we don't fend for our own, who will?"

"Anti-mutant sentiment has increased much since you left home, Lance."

"Hmph, I'll say. So, what's your story?"

"Well, I guess you could say I was framed."

"Sucks."

"Yes, I must agree."

"Why didn't the X-Men bust you out?"

"I must stay the course," Hank said, with no anger or compunction in his voice. "My first hearing is coming up. The DA is a friend of ours sympathetic to mutant rights. He is trying to be just. May I ask, Lance, why did you allow yourself to be arrested?"

The young man shrugged, "There was a news crew. I didn't want to make us look bad."

"I see Sean Cassidy has trained you well. I remember a time you would not have cared about your public image."

"Yeah, gotta grow up sometime. However, as much as I enjoy talking to you Mr. McCoy, I do not plan to stay here and wait for them to arraign me."

"Understandably."

Lance leapt out of the bunk and gave Hank a smirk, "Want to come?"

Hank touched a hand to his chest and bowed his head briefly, "Much obliged, my friend, but alas, I cannot."

"Suit yourself." Avalanche turned to face the cell bars. With an extremely concentrated tremor that took a long time of disciplined training with X-Corps to perfect, he cracked the ground in front of him until the bars bent and broke out of place, leaving a gap wide enough for a man to crawl through. "Good luck, Mr. McCoy."

"Where, may I ask, are you going?"

"To track down a friend."

"Well, godspeed then."

Lance nodded and turned to move, but doubled back, "Hey, Mr. McCoy?"

"Yes, Lance?"

"I know we don't really know each other so well, but be careful, okay? I know a lot of people would get upset if anything happened to you in this shithole."

Hank smiled, "Thank you, Mr. Alvers," and watched the young man make his break out of jail.

Next: Chapter 11 - Hunt