Quetzal finished sharpening the piece of metal she filched. With a hilt wrapped in strips from a torn bed sheet it made a crude but effective weapon. Her mind wandered as she rubbed the edge against the floor. She wondered if Toad believed her when she threatened to snuff him.
"That looks dangerous," her cellmate Alice said.
"Yes, you shouldn't touch it." Quetzal tested the point with her finger and tucked it under her mattress. She would have liked to share the information she learned with the X-men, but there simply wasn't time to find a way to do so. Toad was going to be intercepting her cleaning schedule one more time tomorrow evening. She had to take the chance. Briefly she thought about writing a letter out and giving to Alice to deliver. But that was far too risky. If the message was intercepted Quetzal's secret would be out and she'd likely be killed. And it would put harmless, sweet Alice in danger too.
She could stay of course. Just let the opportunity slide by. Wait for the X-men to come up with their brilliant plan, as they always did, and just follow along. Her escape could very well hamper their plans in the inevitable lockdown that would follow. But that wasn't her nature. She was never the sort to let an opportunity to slip by. And of course she was far too mature to go rubbing it in a few faces that she'd been able to escape while they hadn't.
"I don't think you should have it," Alice said uncertainly. Her purple compound eyes weren't emotive, but she was clearly worried. "We're supposed to tell the guards about dangerous stuff we see. People who have dangerous stuff get in a lot of trouble."
Quetzal smiled. She hoped it was reassuring. "That's why I'm going to keep it a secret."
"I still don't think you should have it."
Quetzal laid back and pulled her covers over her shoulder. "Don't worry Alice. I'll get rid of it tomorrow."
"Promise?"
"Promise."
Quetzal said her evening prayer and closed her eyes. She needed rest. Tomorrow would be a long night. Her human half was a bundle of nerves, so she tapped the reptile. It knew patience. It knew how to rest and wait for the right time to strike.
The next day Quetzal was ready to leave. It wasn't like she had anything to pack. She had the shank up her sleeve and was now simply waiting for her opportunity. Toad still hadn't been fully processed. He would be under guard, but otherwise alone as he was taken to the medlab. She maintained her reptilian mindset and no one seemed to notice that she was especially quiet and vacant throughout the day.
Quetzal had been left to her mopping without anyone watching. Her docility was largely unquestioned. She waited until Toad was walked by with a trio of guards. Silently, deliberately not thinking about what she was doing, Quetzal drew the shank from her sleeve. She slammed it into the neck of one of the guards. At the same time she pulled the stunner from the man's belt and jammed it into the head of the woman. The woman fell to the ground in a heap.
Toad was doing his part. He kicked at the remaining guard. The guard struck back at Toad, knocking him to the ground. The guard pawed at his radio to call for help and at the collar controls to zap the two prisoners back into submission.
Calmly, Quetzal grabbed the man's head and wrenched it to the side. His neck snapped and he died instantly. Still not trying to think about it she knelt and snapped the neck of the unconscious woman. Taking a deep breath she stood up and tried to keep her head together. Minimal blood, minimal commotion; that was good.
"Very nice love, you do this professionally?" Toad took the keys from the guard's belt and undid his cuffs.
Quetzal looked down at him with a numb sort of loathing. "Put on the uniform." She started pulling the uniform off the female guard for herself. We need to be out by the gate when the explosion goes off." She pulled off her pants and shirt.
"What explosion?"
It was just like a quick costume change, that's all it was. Just a costume change between this scene and the next one. Quetzal pulled the guard pants on and slipped into the new shirt as she talked. "The imminent one. Hide the bodies, I'll see what I can do about this blood." Quetzal splashed the bucket of water on the wall and managed to get most of the blood off of it. She used her and Toad's prison greys to absorb the red water and stuffed them into a trashcan. She was in a rush. The ad hoc timer she left in the jeep depot wasn't precise. If they weren't in a place to make a run at the gate then all of this would be for nothing. In the meantime however it would be his prints everywhere.
Toad returned from wherever he had stashed the bodies. Quetzal tied off her hair with a rubber band and jammed it under the cap. For a moment her knees threatened to buckle and her insides turned to jelly.
What am I doing? This isn't right. This isn't right at all.
Firm up girl. You got to get out of here. You got to survive and then you can go all angst and worry about what just happened here. There's a reason dad taught you all of this stuff. Use it.
"Try to look like a soldier," she said. "We are going to walk quickly but oh so very calmly walk towards the front gate. On our way there is going to be a large explosion in the jeep depot. Hopefully that will be enough of a distraction that we can make a break for it."
"Then what?"
"We disappear into the woods."
"What about the collars? They probably have tracking devices."
"I'm not worried about that. Pull up the collar of the shirt to hide it. I'll tell you the rest later. I don't know how much time we have." She pulled the brim of her cap low and started walking for the door.
Toad followed the girl. She had some kind of plan and he was more than willing to go along with it if it meant escape. There was something terrifying about her that inspired confidence, if not trust.
As they approached the gate she slowed down. They got closer and closer to the gate. She was down to a casual stroll by the time they got to the gate and there was yet to be heard any kind of boom.
"You sure whatever you rigged is gonna work?" he hissed at her.
"The theory is sound!" she muttered back.
"Theory?!" Toad barely kept from shouting. She checked an elbow into his gut with enough just enough force to make her displeasure known.
"Blow this and I'll snuff you on principle," she muttered as they approached the guards. She smiled brilliantly and started patting down her pockets. "Hey, any of y'all have a light?" She waved a package of cigarettes she found in the pockets. She shook out a cigarette and stuck it between her lips. "Man, one hell of a duty ain't it," She griped. The girl was brilliantly nonchalant.
"Tell me about it." The man produced a lighter. "Three months in this miserable swamp watching these goddamn muties."
The girl reached for the lighter and Toad's heart jumped into his throat. She had claws at the ends of her fingers! There was no hiding them in this light.
Time slowed down as the girl realized her claws were exposed. She looked down in horror and then up again, meeting the guard's eyes.
Before anything else could occur there was a large explosion. The compound exploded into a frenzy of panicked activity. The girl snapped her long leg up into the man's head. He fell to the ground and she dropped to her knees on his ribcage and finished the job with a twist of his neck. She looked up at Toad. "I told you the theory was sound." She pulled the keys from the corpse's belt. "Let's go."
Quetzal's eyes were fully dilated in the dark. Between that and her heat vision she might as well have been running in broad daylight. "Try to keep up!" she chided Toad.
"What about the collars?"
"We have to get further away." She stepped over a root and heard him stumble on it behind her. She was not inclined to help him.
"Where are we going?"
"North. Into the swamps. Now shut up and run."
They ran in silence for a while. She kept her pace the same as his. It would be easy to outrace him, but that wouldn't get the collar off her. It would just delay her recapture. She wanted to make at least three miles before they were tracked, preferably five.
Toad followed the girl. The moon was up now and he could see the red blob of her hair. She'd lost her cap in the scuffle and hadn't bothered to put her ponytail back up.
He started thinking dark thoughts about her. Things weren't quite adding up. She said she needed help, but he hadn't actually done anything except hide some bodies. She'd set the explosion and killed the guards. He was just tagging along.
And how did she intend on removing the collars in the middle of a goddamn swamp?
The baying of tracking hounds disrupted his train of thought. The camp guards were now hot on their trail and recapture seemed imminent. "They're on our trail. We need to get these collars off!"
"I'm not worried about it. Keep running! Mind the muck!" She slid down a muddy embankment on her rear. Toad slipped and tumbled down, knocking her into the water. "Hurry!" she pulled him up. "Quick, get across. There are gators."
On the opposite bank Toad helped pull her up the slick mud. The dogs were getting closer. "Look pet," he pulled roughly on her arm. "If you know how to get these collars off, now is definitely time to pull that information out of your ass."
"Dunno." She smiled and shucked her muddy jacket off, tossing it into the water, removing his hand from her arm. Her teeth gleamed in the low light. "I said I wasn't worried about it. I'd have been pretty flippin' concerned if I were you." She hooked one of her feet behind his ankle and gave him a sharp push in the sternum, sending him sprawling down the embankment he'd just helped her up. With a whoop, she was off and running.
"You bitch!" he roared as he thrashed out of the water and started after her. The dogs were close enough that he didn't care if their pursuers heard him. He just wanted to get his hands on that skinny little throat of hers. "You're dead when I catch you! I'll break your neck!"
Quetzal kept her careful pace and stopped at the bank to another creek. Toad was just a few yards away, with a murderous look in his eyes. She took a deep breath and shattered the night with her eardrum-piercing screech. "No! Please! Don't hurt me!" she screamed at Toad. Then she flung her head to the side and collapsed down the muddy bank, sliding into the gator-infested water.
Toad stood for a moment. Looking down at her immobile form and wondering what the hell just happened. Then the dogs were on him.
Quetzal's eyes were still open, the protective membranes protecting her eyeballs from the water. It gave her an eerie, dead look. Quetzal found it easy to keep a straight face as Toad was attacked, she was trying to get into a state of hibernation as quickly as possible. The guards pulled out all the stops on his recapture. They thought he'd killed four of their kind on his way out of the camp. Electric nets, sonic guns, and dogs. She felt guilty about what she'd done. Toad was going to suffer the beating of a lifetime tonight. The reality of that had escaped her when she'd crafted this plan. She'd never thought about what would happen to him
I can't help him now. I still have my collar on. I'll make a special point to rescue him when I get back. This is better for everyone, even him.
Yeah, I'm so sure he'll thank me for this. She chided the voice of her justification.
Quetzal felt herself pulled from the water. She was in a half-stupor, having slowed her heartbeat and breathing to as low a rate as she could. In a few minutes she'd be in a full hibernation. As she was fished from the water she let her head loll loose, hoping the extra vertebrae in her neck would make it look broken. "Awww," said the stormtrooper as he checked her neck for a pulse. "Bastard killed poor little Quetzal."
"Shame. She was one of the easier ones to manage."
"Well she weighs a ton. Do we really have to bring her body back?"
"Nah, just grab the collar off it, they're expensive. We can leave her for the gators."
There was a click and hands pulled the collar off roughly. She struggled to keep hold of her last vestiges of consciousness. If one of them pulled out a syringe to dose her with potassium then she would have to wake up quickly and fight. But she was dropped back into the cold water. She let her face float to the surface and stopped fighting the growing dark. As the soldiers walked away she slipped into hibernation.