Seven Years After Capture
Rachel's Age: 15 Years Old
I could be home right now, a beer in one hand and my frail in 'nother, buck-ass naked and warm in my bed. Instead, I'm stuck in the frozen wasteland of B.F.E Ukraine. It's not like the cold bothers me. But the job's a damn suicide mission, and I don't like her bein' out there on her own. The plan is simple: I run in, balls to the wall, an' take in the heavy artillery. Then she goes in behind me and sweeps the docs while everyone else is busy dealin' with Hurricane Victor. Problem is, Raye don't usually stick to the plan.
Damn frail. She's the girl of my wet dreams, no doubt 'bout that, but fuck, she can be one helluva pain in the ass. We fight like cat 'n dogs. 'Course, the make-up sex is always well worth it. But I can't get the girl to listen to a word I say these days. She is hands-down the most stubborn female I've ever met, an' I've been around a while. Most of our scuffles are just 'cause she wants to prove to me she's just as much of a bad-ass as me. As if I don't already know.
A Jeep rolls up as normally scheduled and the gate opens. I rise from my crouch and the gateman start opening fire. While the horns sound off overhead, twenty nine soldiers unload from the Jeep. Fuckin idiots. It don't take a genius to figure out that if an intruder approaches, you might want to close up your base before you start worryin' about firepower. Then I hear the boom of the bazooka an' realize just why they weren't too worried 'bout my threat. I take the blast square in the chest, and it knocks me off my feet into the snow. The second I can breathe again, I smell iron. Then, I let go to the bloodlust an' it's business as usual.
I'm vaguely aware of fightin' through soldiers and bullet spray. I don't even see their faces; all I know is slash, grab, throw, jab, uppercut, kick, bite, jump, tackle, elbow, gun, fire, target down, fire, target down, fire, target down, charge. The sniper's back crashes against the brick an' I can hear his vertebra snap. He drops. I pick up the bazooka, take aim & unleash a small missile at each gun tower. As mortar and bodies fly everywhere, I'm runnin' across the field on all fours. But a crowd of footmen are out 'fore I even reach the outer wall. I scan the heads in clusters of ten an' count eighty or so. That means another hundred inside. She's got no time!
I make a sharp right and head straight for the general's quarters. I infiltrated the Ukraine Special Forces for a short time so I know exactly what their contingency plan is for highest ranking officer attacks. Sure enough, the horns turn to a wail, and the entire fleet of soldiers pours onto the yard, trying to head me off. They'll leave only seven inside, but they'll be the base elite. No matter. Raye'll kill them in no time. Then, she'll duck out before anyone even knows the papers are missin'. Haven't quite figured out how I'm gettin' out. This is why I don't take a job with less than a month's notice, damnit!
The first man sweeps my ankles and we go crashing into the sleet-crusted ground. I kill him and a dozen of his buddies but in no time, they've got me with sheer numbers. They cuff my wrists and throw me to my knees. The circle parts and I'm lookin' up into the eyes of General Ustim Pavlenko. Back when I knew him, it was Sergeant Pavlenko.
"Viktor," he says through that ol' familiar smirk. Bastard. "How do you Americans say? 'Long time, no see', yes?"
"I'm Canadian." I spit through a mouthful of blood.
"Oh? According to whom? My guess is they do not have you on their books. My guess is we could throw you in the hole for a decade, and no country would come to your aid this time." He looks up at the rubble of his base and the smile fades from his face. "Men!" he barks in Russian. "Your performance was pathetic! Have you not trained to deal with freaks like this man?"
He points his .49 at the forehead of a lieutenant. The man shakes but remains in attention. "When a mutant with increased strength attacks, how do you deal with him?"
The soldier's eyes stray to the left and Pavlenko cocks the gun. "I am not asking them. I ask you! How do you deal with him?"
"Cut off his legs." He says in Russian. His eyes squint at the general, and somethin' passes between them for a second. I'm guessin' they're not friends.
"Yes, you cut off his legs." Pavlenko pulls the trigger and the soldier's body slumps to the ground. He turns to the rest of his soldiers. "A man with the all the strength in the world can do nothing if he cannot move."
He turns the glock on me and fires two rounds, each just above my kneecaps. I howl in pain, but don't attack. As much as I'd love to, I know that the longer everyone is distracted, the better chance Raye has to get in and get out. I take the pain and consider how many ways I'll rip him apart later. "Now," Pavlenko shouts, "clean this shit up! I will deal with the mutant."
The soldiers give their ass-backwards Ukrainian salute and turn to work. Meanwhile, Pavlenko takes my left arm and half drags me to his quarters. Somethin's wrong here! There ain't no way he can carry my weight.
He shoves me to the ground inside the small palace and my legs collapse onto some Persian rug…right next to a corpse, a corpse that looks amazingly like General Ustim Pavlenko. I turn to the man who carried me in. His image flickers, like I'm lookin' at a tv or something. Then the general fades and Rachel is standin' in his place.
I blink twice, and close my gapin' mouth. I know a thing or two 'bout disguises. Disguises are one helluva a tricky thing. "How the hell—?"
She chuckles. "I just read the memory of Pavlenko from your own minds and projected it back to you all. It took no more effort than holding up a mirror."
As soon as I'm over the shock of it, another realization hits me. "You shot me?" She shrugs. "Why'd you fuckin' shoot me?"
"Shh!" she hushes me. "Lower your voice or they'll think there's a scuffle, and burst in to rescue me! Aren't you healed yet, anyway?"
"Just barely," I grumble.
"Well, then, 'stop yer belly achin'," she says, quoting me. "I've got the documents. You grab Pavlenko. There's a car ready just out the back door."
"In a minute." I twirl her to face me, put one hand under each of her butt cheeks, hoist her up around my waist, and thrust her roughly against the wall. I kiss her neck and scrape my fangs hard on her shoulder until I hear her muffled scream. "Don't fuckin' shoot me again," I order in a hoarse whisper. She nods, grabs a fistful of my hair with one hand, and unzips my fly with her other.
As I'm drivin' down the windy mountain road, I can't get her breasts out of my mind. Or her mile-long legs. Or that crazy sexy spot between those legs where the muscles 'round her pussy flex.
"Better distract yourself," she says. "You're getting hard again."
I chuckle, then realize she's right. "Why'd you kill the soldier?"
"Hmm?"
"That soldier, back at the base. Why'd you pull the trigger?"
She shrugs. "Why not?
"Because he wasn't the target?" I suggest.
She looks sideways at me. "Based on the memories I pulled from you and the others of Pavlenko, he was a horrible man. Insanely cruel. I had to pull off a truly convincing fake because we couldn't chance someone walking into his quarters to check on me. I needed them to really believe that I was him, and to think I was in no mood for questions." Her scent turns kinda cloudy.
I keep my stare ahead. "You know, Red, I don't have to be psychic to know when yer lyin'. You've been in my head. You know me inside and out, and I know you, too. Why the hell would you ever have to lie to me?"
She turns away and stares out the window.
Why would I ever have to lie to you, Victor? I suppress the urge to sigh. If he only knew the many lies I've told him, my friend, my lover, my partner, my soul mate. This job wasn't about the papers at all. Granted, since we were already going in, the Americans figured we could go ahead and pick those up at the same time. They've needed proof that Ukraine was building and shipping Iran's nuclear warhead program for years. But, no, we went in for Brezhnev, the soldier who assassinated one of our top super soldiers.
The Ukranians made all the right moves after he killed Maverick. They framed one of their highest spies, who had recently gone rouge and pissed off a lot of upper management, for the job. They gave Brezhnev a new name, reassigned him to a middle-of-nowhere, good-for-nothing base, where no one knew him, and where he could lay low for six months to a year. But, luckily for us, we have spies within their intelligence department.
When the call for the hit came in, I happened to answer the phone. I took the job for my old godfather, Wolverine, who was Maverick's closest teammate, and who would've wanted his assassin dead. But I lied to Victor about the mission, because I knew the complex fight that would ensue. While Maverick and Sabretooth certainly weren't friends, they were teammates, blood brothers, and that goes deeper than any disagreements they had during their SHIELD days. Still, Victor would've known, especially if he asked me and my scent changed, the real reason that I wanted to kill the man. He would've known that my allegiance is still deeper to Logan than it is to the man I love. Victor Creed doesn't know the meaning of the word insecurity—except when it comes to Wolverine.
And I have tried and tried, but have yet to master the art of masking my pheromones around him. After combing through his memories, I learned that he has the power of chemoreception, which gives him the ability, like many animals, to read the chemical stimuli around him through taste and smell. I now know how to interpret the different smells the human body gives off. The problem is that I don't know how to access his sense of smell. Like most people, I haven't memorized the map of the human brain. If I could find a neurosurgeon, or any doctor for that matter, I could take the information from their memory bank. But hours of stretching my mind as far as I possibly can have yet to turn up anyone with med school experience. We live in the middle of absolutely nowhere now, and even though I'm able to look out almost a hundred miles, I've only located a handful of other minds in our mountain range.
"That's a lot of thinkin' yer doing there, Frail. You gonna share?"
I flash him my brightest smile. "Do you know there isn't anyone else on the planet I'd rather kill people with?"
He smiles back. "I love you, too, Frail." It's the first time he's ever said the words out loud. There is no change in his voice, no dramatic pause, he doesn't even glance my away, but the words hit my like a punch in the face.
I love you. I love you. I love you. I play the words back in my mind over and over again. For some reason, they make me feel even worse.
The girl looks back out the window again and I can tell I'm not gettin' another word outta her. She makes me worry. Which ain't somethin' I do often, and especially not for others. She's not been the same for a long time. Ever since she killed the SHIELD agent back last year, it's like a switch went off in her head. Sure, she's been sexy, deadly, witty and dark—everything I could ever ask outta a woman, but she's all been distracted, withdrawn, moody, and down-right depressed at times. And she hates herself. I've tried ignorin' that fact for a while, but I know it's true. A few times, I've smelled mercury in her chest, and when I asked her what she was thinking, she scratched her arms or shoulders, all absent-minded-like. What she don't know is that scratching is body language for self frustration.
Fightin' the urge to sigh, I feel her fingers wrap around mine. We stare out the window, both lost in our own thoughts. And we drive.