AN: This chapter is brought to you by something man has fought against since they first twiddled their thumbs. Since the times of drawing pictures with rocks on cave walls. Yes, my friends. This chapter is brought to you by none other than…Boredom. I'm sick right now (threw up twice over nothing), I'm tired of Xbox Live, and my newest addiction is keeping me up at night killing all the juice in my PS3 controllers that have lost the ability to charge. So I'm taking a break to mellow out. Thus, this chapter was started. Just wait till you see the author's note at the bottom…Disclaimer: I have no hold over Marvel and its property. I think I've made that clear. But if I did…
Chapter 8
Encore
A stiff neck. That's what he woke up to. Then he felt weight on his back, his arms, actually, his whole body. He couldn't move. Blinking away the blurry vision, he tries to strain his neck to get a better look around. He couldn't. He couldn't move at all, except to blink and breathe. His jaw was held shut by something he couldn't see.
The concrete walls in front of him were bare and white. No details or furniture were placed along that side of the room. It was bland and devoid of anything.
What was going on? Where was he? Why was he-
A door opened, informing the immobile man that there was indeed a way out. It also told him that someone else was in the room. Footsteps were heard on the floor, heading in his general direction. Slowly. The steps came from behind him at first, but then they slowly came to his left side, then in front of him.
"You're awake. Good. I've decided to keep you here for a while longer to observe you. You are not my main intention, but you may become useful to me in the future."
The woman in front of him was a stranger, unrecognized at all by the bound man. She was a business woman, her aura she projected screamed professionalism. Her apparel of a woman's doctor's scrubs further accentuated the aura, but he doubted she needed the clothes to be so serious. He wondered to himself what kind of music she listened to.
"Your talents offer you and me the unique opportunity to monopolize an entire market, so long as you are willing to co-operate. I know all about you, with your dreams and goals. They are of no interest to me. But your powers could make someone a lot of money, if used properly. I plan on being that person. So for now, I'll leave you here in isolation to give you time to…soften up to my proposal. Until next time."
The woman backed out of his sight of view, her footsteps disappearing altogether when the door shut behind her. At her absence, the man began to struggle against whatever it was that was holding him completely still. Nothing changed or gave way. Then he began to resorting to something he normally held himself back from. He began humming, letting it build up in his body as melodies and music began to mingle and intertwine within each other. It began to pour out of him, exiting his being until it hit resistance. It was thick, solid, and with no cracks or opening. He was being held by something entirely in one piece. Not straps or rope, but like a metal coffin. He had no idea how close he was to being right.
Time to test out how solid it really was. What people didn't often understand about sound is that while it was vibrations moving extremely fast, it was generated by something else. Motion. What else was generated by motion? Heat. If one were able to see it, then they would watch as the captured man began to heat the molecules around him, inside whatever it was that held him, until they began to move. It began to vibrate along with his entire being in a faint humming that sounded like an electric current, as sweat clung to his skin, unable to fall off properly inside his prison. The vibration increased with the heat being expelled off his body. He was beginning to feel the effects of using his powers in such a way.
It was tiring and draining his bodily fluids much faster than he would've thought. But he began to feel cracks opening up in his prison. He knew the molecules inside were heating up so much that they were breaking their bonds and flying about, knocking other molecules out of place. On a larger scale, he felt chips breaking off and falling to the tiled ground and shattering like tinkling glass. Larger and larger pieces began falling off, each piece shattering and making the mutant remember just how tired he was. The shattering glass made him feel like falling over and shattering himself.
Minutes crawled by as he slowly gained mobility and freed himself from what he know saw to be a pink hued glass in the floor at his feet. Picking his feet up out of the heavy shards and onto safer ground, he reached down to brush the shards and dust off of his shoes. One shard stabbed into his skin, sticking out like a splinter. Plucking it out and sucking at the mildly bleeding spot, he examined the offending glass. That wasn't really glass. Looking inside it, the man found that the light was refracting too much to be a regular glass. This was thicker, too. He decided on the term crystal for it and threw the shard away. It was useless to him anyways.
Stretching and easing his aching body while wringing out his sweat-soaked clothes, the man turned and examined the room, which was just as plain as the wall he watched in his crystal case. The door had no handle on his side, but there was an indention where it would be. More than enough for DJ to identify where he should channel his music next. He cupped his hands over the spot, ensuring that the vibrations would be enclosed as much as possible. Again, he began to vibrate music as it poured out of his hands, vibrating the metal gears inside the door. His hands began to sweat and tire the young man, but he stuck with the process until the door loosened up and swung inwards.
The hallway it revealed was just as descriptive as the room he was leaving. Cursing the interior designer for giving him no clues on where to go or how to get out, DJ started walking right, clinging to the wall as if it would stop someone from seeing him. What was he supposed to do? He'd never been kidnapped before or been in a situation like this. He just knew that he had to go home.
What had happened at that party? He remembered going to the bathroom, some scrawny white kid catching him humming, and then getting offered to a school for mutants like him. He left the bathroom, finished his set and someone walked up to him. Then he couldn't remember anymore. Why would they take him in the first place? He wasn't absurdly powerful. He could generate sounds at any frequency or pitch and imitate anything he'd ever heard. It wasn't like he could pick up a bus or open wormholes to space. The lady said something about making money off of him. She probably wanted to hook him up to a recorder and let him turn loose. It wouldn't work.
DJ wanted to be a professional DJ himself, making music for people with the talent to make out of it. He didn't particularly care for genre, but he knew it would be easier to produce for hip-hop or pop singers than for other genre. But all of that wouldn't happen unless he got signed, which couldn't happen because nobody would hire someone born mute. And unless he revealed his mutation and give away his secret, then he could never show them his real music.
He had tried recording himself with what little equipment he could afford to buy and it had failed. The recordings were either terribly mangled or simply unable to record the sounds. He had wanted to get his music run through frequency scanners that would tell him how high or low he would have to set the recordings to pick up his sounds. Everything he had tried so far didn't work. Proper recording studio machinery, though…It was his goal in life to buy his own.
Brushing his unsuccessful attempts at recording back into the recesses of his mind, DJ focused back on getting out of wherever he was.
-Elsewhere at another Time-
Another figure was stirring from inside his crystal tomb. Slowly waking up, the teen tensed up at his state of complete immobility, running rain check on his physical being, before slumping back down as if he was asleep. It would be better if no one knew he was awake. It would give him time to use his other senses and gather information.
Silence. There were no sounds to be heard asides his own breathing and heartbeats that seemed to echo and resonate inside the material holding him. The room smelled of cleaning products and disinfectants, reminding him of hospital clinics and clean rooms. He was hot, already mildly sweating and unable to wipe it away. The water soaked into his clothes or skin, unable to fall off of his frame. Finally opening his eyes, he was greeted with the sight of a black window in front of him. The glass was either incredibly thick or extremely tinted. Maybe both. He fixed it with a glare. Someone was behind it watching him.
He noticed a camera sitting in the corner of the room, set up to watch him directly. It stuck out in the plain white room that he could see. He imagined what was behind him was the same plain decal. A door opened behind him, the hinges screeching in an intended effect to make him nervous. Footsteps, the kind that go with high-heeled shoes, clacked on the tile floor. It was a sound he hated hearing. Women were always the most annoying people to ever try to kill him. Guys simply tried to make things quick and simple. Women stretched things out and tried to play the revenge card. But sadly, they hadn't figured out that giving him time was a dangerous weapon against them.
The steps made their way completely behind him, before heard the faint rustling of sleeves and heard the sound of something metallic tap against something hard. Then, with an agonizing slowness, the metal object was dragged around his prison, letting out its horrible screech against the abuse. The steps followed behind and slowly the figure of a woman dressed as a doctor stopped in front of him. Before he could look over her features and add her to his list of bodies to leave behind, he noticed the object that protested so much against its earlier abuse. A scalpel. And despite its rough treatment, it still looked plenty sharp.
"I'm sure there is no need for introductions between us, Luke. I doubt someone of your nature would allow yourself to forget me so quickly."
It was her. The woman who had hired him for that botchy job. The woman who had put a hit on his head. The woman, who right now was making her worst mistake, was waving a sharp object dangerously close to his face.
"I remember. I missed you. Sending a hit man isn't quite the same as seeing you face to face. Now that you're here, we can catch up on how insane you've been since last time."
She smiled at this, pressing the scalpel ever so gently against his jaw line, reveling in the twitch she got out of him.
"Trust me. I've been plenty."
Pulling back, she noticed the sharp exhale that Luke gave, and while it gave her great satisfaction that she got such a reaction of him with a knife, she noticed just how close it was to her own throat. Much closer than her hand would've ever brought it on its own accord. Pushing back any emotions that wanted to surge forward, the doctor simply placed the scalpel inside a latched container carried inside one of her deep white coat pockets.
"There was no need for that Luke. We're all friends here. You and I are going to work together again after our last debacle and finish the job you started. I need more blood."
A snicker was drawn out from the imprisoned mutant. "I'd love to go fetch it for you, but as you've probably noticed, I'm a little tied up here. So unless you want to remedy this little situation, I can't really help."
A laugh rose out of her, sounding much more sinister than he would've given her credit for.
"You seem to misunderstand my orders yet again, Luke. I don't need you to go get any blood. I just want you to give me yours!"
'She's crazy as hell. How did I not notice it when I first saw her? That glint in her eyes. It's always been there, hasn't it?'
She looked the same as when he had first met her, if a little less done-up, so to speak. Less make-up, a more noticeable bagging around the eyes from sleep deprivation, and her incredibly pristine lab coat. Which he was gonna ruin. Digging a little deeper down and flexing his gag reflexes as far as he could, the teen hacked up as much coppery blood as he could before spitting. The large glob of spit and blood sailed perfectly through the air, landing nicely to the left of her front chest pockets.
Instantly, the blood stained. For a moment, Luke was disappointed at how little she reacted. He watched carefully for any tell she had, a fist clenching, jaw muscles tightening, an eyebrow twitch. Anything to know he was getting to her. Nothing. So it left him a little surprised when she smacked his face. Whatever was encasing him didn't give way, but the hit left him rattled.
It was an awkward hit, for sure. She couldn't catch the fullness of his face do to so much being encased, but what she did make contact with was quickly turning red and swelling.
"You hit like a man. It makes me question just what all you're hiding from me, Doc. As a patient, I'm pretty sure I have the right to pick my own doctor. I refuse to be treated by a man."
"It matters? I figured most cocky punks like you would prefer a male doctor because you think women belong at home cooking or cleaning."
"It matters because I want proof you're a woman and not something in between. And the only way you could prove it would be enough to set my soul at rest before I die. Unless, of course, you've been stuffing."
She hit him again, this time using her actual fist instead of an open hand. Again, he could feel the swelling already.
"When are you gonna move past physical violence? I thought it was part of the doctor's oath when they're sworn in or whatever to never intentionally cause harm to a patient?"
"It is. But there are two reasons I'm not upheld to that. One, I've never been 'sworn in'. Two, I did that as a perfectly valid test to see if your mutation allows you to still feel pain. Your reaction to each hit would indicate that you have developed a higher pain tolerance than most, but nothing to the extremity as some mutants."
"My pain tolerance can easily be explained by the fact that a lot of bad things have happened to me. There's also the fact that I can hardly move thanks to this crystal you've got me buried in. But enough about me. I gotta ask. How the hell did you get someone like Mystique to do your dirty work for you and capture me? No matter how much you're paying, she would rather have me on her side or get rid of me herself than hand me over."
This was important. The Brotherhood's involvement in this was the biggest factor in how likely he was to escape. If they were still around, then he was screwed. If they were gone, then he might have a chance. He would've already have been out of here if she hadn't been surprisingly strong. Her strength had kept that knife out of her windpipe, but next time, he wouldn't hold back. Hell, why was he waiting now? He could simply collapse her throat with a heart-powered push in the proper area.
"Your friends agreed to bring you in as long as they could to oversee the tests I do. And Mystique's boss is the one who wants the money, not her. So apparently she isn't in charge as she would lead people to believe."
"How do you know her in the first place?"
His mysterious doctor, former employer, and current captor simply smiled, as she began to move out of his field of vision. She went to his left, taking several paces until she stopped maybe 15 feet away. The rustling heard later sounded as if a drawer was being opened and the sound of hollow plastic contacting each other filled the room. As the drawer closed and she began to make her way back in front of him, she began answering his question.
"It was you who introduced us. When you stole that blood for me, she was there that same night trying to get it as well. When you stole it before she did, she must've followed it back with you, then to the meeting point. As a shape shifter, I'm sure you were well unaware and I don't blame you for it. But once our transaction was completed, she confronted me in the alleyway and demanded the blood. I refused and she shape-shifted into something terrifying. But luckily, I escaped with a little luck and a stun gun. She pursued me later and took what blood was left after I had started testing it. As for what she did with it, I'm uncertain. But the blood I had was invaluable for my research. A donation from you would benefit me even further."
She was back in front of him, and had somehow cleaned off the blood stain or replaced her coat. From out of her pocket she pulled a syringe, which from Luke's point of view, looked larger and more painful than what he thought was necessary. He wasn't scared of needles by any means, but that was one big needle.
"What a shame. My charity bank is all run out. You'll have to wait until someone else has made a deposit to me before I can give one to you. So maybe if you gave me my freedom back with your charity, I could give you a little blood."
"Let's skip the foreplay, Luke. I'm not taking your blood now, anyways. We can wait for a while on that front. This is just another thing I want to test on an actual patient. It's not everyday I can inject a volunteer with such a wide variety of drugs that I've been provided with and record the effects it has on you and your powers."
The statement led to further examination of the syringe, which indeed had some type of drug flowing inside of it, waiting to be injected. A touch of nervousness began to build in Luke. As a kid who raised himself for nearly half a decade and had a little money to waste, drugs had always been an option. But never one that appealed to him. He'd seen enough of that with his mom. Now he was being held against his will away from anyone and everyone who would want to help him to be injected by a random drug to see how it affected his powers.
The doctor took her time to build upon the fear when she leaned in, her hand lowly leading the needle to its mark. It was an exposed area underneath his chin. A patch of crystal had either been removed or simply never grown over his neck, which was now exposed to the syringe and a madwoman. A gasp escaped the teen's lips against his will, making him close his eyes in shame as the cold metal hit skin. A moment was given in pause and he knew it was merely to give his captor the time to dwell in pleasure from eliciting such a response. He opened his eyes in a glare and caught her eyes, a startling dark blue. They were very pretty, but the soul behind it was enough to avert Luke's gaze. At her second victory, she slipped the needle past his skin and into his bloodstream and began to inject liquid fire into his veins.
Biting his lip as he struggled vainly against the rock imprisoning him, the teen was stuck in what felt like cement while the drug began to course through his body.
"For the next few hours, your nerves should be firing at a much faster rate. That is why you feel so much pain from the slight pinch of the syringe. Give it a moment and you'll be making snide one-shots at me all over again."
Luke hardly heard her, concentrating on dulling the newfound pain as much as he could without being able to at least sooth the skin. It may have been instinct, but it still hurt that he couldn't curl up in the fetal position and ignore the world. His breathes began to become more of a struggle as he tried to steady his bodily rates again.
The woman had already left from in front of him, leaving the room entirely and into the conjoined room that had the glass window. Her voice was broadcast through an intercom system, telling him "I'll be observing you in here so you'll have some privacy to yourself. Enjoy it while it lasts."
A glare was sent at the incredibly thick glass, though the occupant on the other side was unfazed. But when a small crack appeared on the glass, the doctor behind the glass nearly fell out of her chair. That glass was four inches thick and was nigh unbreakable. For this mutant to be able to break it while still imprisoned and unable to properly move made an astounding statement of his powers. Maybe Mystique was misguided in believing that Luke Hensley needed to move at all to use his powers?
On the other side of the glass, a set of closed eyes, partially open mouth, and a small trail of blood leaking from said open mouth spoke on just how enhanced Luke's nerves were. Near-instantly he was unconscious from the pain in his chest. This too was observed by the scientist behind the glass. She merely took notes and smiled at her unconscious prey.
At the X-mansion
"Like, where is he professor? He was supposed to be back last night and it's been all day! Did he, like, get lost or something?"
Charles Xavier rubbed his temples, trying to ease the mild headache he had from using Cerebro for so long. He had been inside for over an hour, scanning for one mutant teen in particular to little avail. He simply wasn't presenting a strong presence. It was odd, though, that Cerebro was having so much trouble finding someone that was already in its records. It had found him somewhere in upper New York, but Luke Hensley wasn't entirely on the map. Telepathically, he was out of reach too. He was either unconscious or somehow being blocked off. He doubted the later as very few people knew how to block telepaths and it was very unlikely that Luke had stumbled into a place where someone did.
Kitty had been standing right outside of the Cerebro chamber waiting on the Professor to emerge. She was tempted to go into the chamber herself, but the man had warned her against it. A stray thought from him magnified by Cerebro could kill her, or leave her in a vegetative state.
"I'm still not sure, Kitty. Cerebro shows him somewhere in upper New York, but he's unreachable by Cerebro. He still hasn't answered his cell phone, I presume?"
She shook her head, her hand instinctively raising her hand up to her mouth as she anxiously spoke "What if something bad happened last night, Professor? Why else wouldn't he answer his phone? That scary strong guy from the Brotherhood was at the party last night. What if he kidnapped Luke or something?"
Charles gave himself a second to breathe before answering. Kitty had been wearing down on him as soon as she learned Luke had never come home last night. Xavier himself had discussed it with Wolverine and a recovered Storm and they had reached their own conclusions on the subject. It was surprising to him just how concerned the girl was with Luke. Maybe it was the closeness in age or the reassurance he had given her last night to go home herself.
"Kitty, I checked over Cerebro's recordings and Luke only used his powers mildly last night. I highly doubt that he was kidnapped by Terrence or there would've been a much bigger use of them."
"What if he was caught off guard, Professor? That guy knocked Storm out without anyone even knowing except Luke! We've got to do something!"
Sighing and rubbing his temples at the much stronger headache forming, the man in the wheelchair decided to fully explain to his youngest student.
"Kitty, has it crossed your mind that maybe Luke is simply moving on from here? That he's simply ready to find his next job and go back to working as a mutant for hire? I've already discussed this with Ororo and Logan and they both seem to agree with me that Luke has simply decided that he's gained what he could from us. Luke has never attached himself to us or our way of doing things. As a matter of fact, his entire reason for being at the party was to disobey the punishment we had given him. I think you should just accept the fact that he's gone."
The explanation hit hard, causing the girl to take a step back in doubt. The man took the time to continue back down the hall towards the elevator to take him back up. The girl ran after him and caught up with him just as the door opened. If the man in the wheelchair was honest with himself, he would admit he just wanted Kitty to drop it. But her persistence was arguably her best and worst quality. As the elevator doors closed, she began to tell her counter-argument.
"He never packed or said goodbye. He wouldn't leave all that stuff here with us and he wouldn't leave without telling us."
"Kitty, do you remember when I left to go see Luke in Virginia? I went to see him that morning and by that afternoon he had agreed to come. He didn't ask his parents, tell his friends, or anybody. Luke doesn't seem the type to connect with just anyone and I don't think he has here at the mansion either."
Xavier had left out a few bits and pieces in his explanation. Luke didn't live with his parents or any other kind of family. He didn't have a genuine friend, the closest thing being his teacher that he tormented on a daily basis. He didn't tell a single person asides his teacher that he was leaving, letting the Professor do all of the paperwork and signing when it came to changing schools.
"No way. He's been friendly to all of us here. I mean sure, he has problems with Scott and Logan, but he always laughs at Kurt's jokes and hangs out with us after Danger Room sessions."
"Kitty, he has been friendly, I'm sure. But has he been a friend?"
The doors opened up and the man rolled onward, leaving the girl struggling with the conflicting thoughts in her head. After a moment, she headed out of the elevator with a look of determination on her face.
Unknown Location
DJ had been running a while, taking lefts and rights along the way through the labyrinth of white hallways inside wherever he was. He was unsure of the time, as his internal clock had vanished upon regaining conscious inside the crystal. He was hungry and thirsty, but it wasn't enough to slow him down. He had to escape. Nothing else mattered.
Turning randomly down hallways that all looked identical, DJ kept his steady pace as his shoes hit the floor, the only sound heard that echoed in all the halls. 'I hate this place's interior designer!'
Running past a room that he wasn't going to turn into, DJ skidded to a halt when he passed by when his peripheral picked something up. The door to the room was red. Unlike anything else he had seen so far, this one door had color. Testing his luck and his curiosity, he tried the door and found that it opened very easily and without a sound. Inside he found that the room was empty like all the others, except the back wall had a metal door thick enough to pass for a bank vault dead in the middle of it. It had no apparent handle and must've only opened up from the other side.
Cursing his luck, he was just about to turn and leave when he heard the sound of metal sliding and scrapping metal. Pressing himself flat against the vault door wall, he watched in amazement and fear as the metal rearranged itself and squirmed around as if it were alive and reshaped into a perfectly rectangle door that a figure walked through, cloaked in dark clothes.
The figure turned directly to DJ, who was clutching at the wall in shock and more fear, feeling like a cornered rat. Then he spoke.
"Greetings, young Darius. Or should I call you DJ? We have much to discuss."
Experimentation Lab
Behind the glass, her supposed window of safety, Dr. Penelope Gage observed the slow breathing of the teen imprisoned in rock before her. It was such a strange thing, how this had come about. Terrence had failed in his objective to kill Luke, apparently having the job wiped from his mind by some Xavier character. But after a week or so with no word and no results, the doctor had taken it upon herself to track him down.
It was hard, but she had found him under Mystique's care in her misfit operation, some so called 'Brotherhood.' From there, she simply made a couple calls and contacted the mysterious woman, who did not recognize her voice over the phone. The doctor had played things smooth and tried to win Terrence back into her own service, but the woman had made a much more promising proposition in mind. She would deliver Luke to the doctor's lab, but she would be able to stay on site and watch over the studies as well as a larger sum of money. She would also bring in a second mutant that the doctor would have free reign to study when she finished with Luke. It had seemed too good to be true and the doctor had agreed near immediately. So far, things had gone swimmingly.
Except for that one tiny crack in the glass. That little crack was annoying her every time her eyes wandered to it. The boy was on drugs and already supremely sensitive to pain, as obvious from his reaction to the shot itself. The fact that he had the will and the strength to do something he knew was going to hurt just to spite her made the woman anxious. His attempt with her scalpel earlier was close enough. It was merely his misjudgment of her physical strength that saved her life. He obviously had more strength residing in him then he cared to show. The question that made her so worried was just how much? The doctor may have been a professional and devoted to her research, but she wasn't going to lose her life over it.
Luke had yet to recover from his state of unconsciousness, nor did it look like he was going to anytime soon. From the murmurs and groans, she could tell he was still in pain while knocked out. In that state, she had already taken as much blood as she needed to run every test she had in mind. Most of it was already being run through machines and would be giving her the results in a few hours. The variations she had seen from tests so far were amazing. The gap between the normal DNA coding of a human and Luke's were beyond her expectancies, even after seeing several other similar experiments with mutant DNA. She could spend the next few years working out her thesis with the results she had.
Even with all of the massive information she had gained from Luke's blood and DNA, her key goal was to gather a sample of his muscle tissue. The location of where to take it from and how large of a sample were the key issues. She needed to know if his powers were generated in certain muscles, like his arms and chest, or how much motion did he need to use his powers. The more detail she could work out of the mutant, the better she would be able to use that sample. Taking too much also proved to be a problem, as she was unsure if he would ever grow any mutated muscle back for her to take more of.
While she was working some of these problems out hypothetically, a computer alert caught her vision. Turning to read it over, she cursed under her breathe and bit her tongue. The second mutant she would study, DJ, had broken out of his room and was on the loose. There was no telling where he had gone to or what he could do. His room had been in the center of her lab space and there were hallways going in every direction. There was also the matter of how to restrain him. If he had broken out of his glass coffin, then what did she have here to hold him? And how would she recapture him in the first place?
Mystique was the answer. She was also the only person inside the lab that the doctor didn't want to see. They had yet to run across each other in the exchanging of money and mutants. Unsure of how the shape-shifter would react when they eventually did meet, the doctor had kept her stun gun on her person at all times, tucked in an inner pocket of her jacket. Now seemed to be the time to see if it would matter. Leaving her studying area through a pass coded door, she stepped outside and found Terrence standing there, waiting for some kind of order.
"Go find Mystique and use your team to track down that mutant on the loose. Make sure you restrain him properly this time!"
Gage ducked back in the door and double checked it behind her to make sure it locked. She may have hired Terrence in the first place, but she trusted him all the less for it. Checking over her prisoner's vitals, she saw that there was no change in activity. It seemed she would still have to play the waiting game. Fine.
X-mansion Residential Floor
'There has got to be something in his room that proves he didn't just walk out on us last night!'
Katherine Pride has set herself in front of the currently unoccupied room of Luke Hensley, staring determinedly at it, as if she had x-ray vision for a power instead of intangibility. No one else was in the hallway with her, nor was anyone informed of her plan. If they were, they would probably try to dissuade her from going into Luke's room and personal belongings.
Glancing up and down the empty hallway, Kitty stepped forward and concentrated, letting the feeling of emptiness her powers gave her take over as she continued to step through the door. It was odd, walking through the wall but not falling through the floor. Somehow that never happened as long as she stayed focused.
The inside of the room was normal, similar to every other room on the floor. There weren't any posters pined up or pictures tacked to the wall like in her room, but there was a small stereo in the corner of the room, with wires running all over it. There was also a mini-fridge beside the bed.
"How did he get a mini-fridge in here? That is so unfair!"
Opening it, she found nothing but cans of Dr. Pepper.
"Addicted much?"
Kitty walked over to a garbage bin next to the main dresser and saw it full of empty cans. Leaving those alone, she began checking the rest of his exposed room. There were a few DVDs and books tucked away on a shelf, an empty closet and an empty suitcase.
'He never packed up anything. He couldn't just leave this stuff.'
Deep down though, she knew that this wouldn't be enough for the Professor or the teachers. She needed something more. So now came the moment of truth. Kitty made her way out of the closet and back to the main dresser. Was she really ready to search though this to get her hands on proof that Luke was staying?
Pulling open the top left drawer, she nearly sighed with relief when she saw only the sock drawer. She had done her unfair share of laundry around the house, mostly her own and Jean's, but enough to know just what all she could find. Digging her hands in till her nails hit the bottom wood, she searched around and scrapped across something that didn't sound like wood at all. Pushing the socks aside and digging the object out, she opened it up and looked over the front page.
Shutting it back hurriedly, she tucked the item under her arms and ran out of the room, phasing through the door in her headlong dash to Xavier's personal study.
Upper New York, Underground Labs
"Alright Fissure. You know the deal. Crack that door open for us and we'll let you see the girl again."
A group of 5 figures cloaked in the shadows of the forest around them had gathered around the oddly placed heavy metal entrance of what they knew to be a laboratory. The group was varied in size and shape, with some figures obviously younger and some older. The one who had spoken was the leader of the group, the largest of all the people gathered.
One individual split himself from the group, heading towards the large door that was completely out of place with its surroundings. He stopped directly in front of it and placed his hands out, palms flat. After a mere moment, he tucked his hands back into the sleeves of his cloak and walked back to the group. After a few steps, the door came down after him, split perfectly in two pieces.
Not a word was said as another figure walked off into the new entrance as Fissure made his way back to the group. The person, most likely male from the size and gait, was gone for but a minute as the others stood in silence. When the figure returned from the entryway and stopped in his original position, the leader questioned sharply "Where you spotted?"
"Not a chance. Two guards in the hall, lightly armed with basic ballistics vest, a side arm I didn't recognize, and a stun gun. Snipe could take them down in less than two, no alerts."
The leader seemed pleased with this report, as his eyes brightened from beneath his dark hood.
"All right men, we-" "Ahem."
The leader stopped to glare at the interrupter, the only female in the team. She glared back and the leader dropped his gaze. She was arguably the most important piece in his operations, so he appeased her with small things like this.
"Team, we've got our assignments and our targets. Let's move!"
AN: Fanfic screwed up the past 4 attempts to upload this! Meh. I despise myself for not making anything important happen in this chapter. There was simply too much that I wanted to convey while still having multiple things go on at once. This next chapter is gonna be funner for me. Yes, I said funner. I'm trying to fill in any gaps I've found that need filling, but most of the openness that my plot has is there for a reason. Gotta leave you guys some room to wonder and question. I set up a poll for people to vote on Luke's codename, it's on my profile so check it out if it matters to you in the slightest.
Sorry to anybody waiting on this, school can drag me down sometimes. I've learned some valuable things lately, though. I've dealt with my sickness I get around a certain someone and I am in the process of getting in that person's good graces. Maybe that means I'll settle down in front of my keyboard more because I won't be as stressed.
Chapter title came for an Eminem song off of the album Encore. Very first song I ever heard by him. Beta read over this one, so maybe he spruced up a few things unlike my last chapter. I looked over it one more time when I uploaded it and wanted to cry. Reviewers need to point out when my spelling is that off. Maybe the hurt and embarrassment will cause me to straighten up. So R&R, enjoy your day, and thanks for reading. Big Willis, out!