Chapter 3
Gambit launched himself out of bed so fast it seemed to him like he'd jumped a heartbeat before the alarm had gone off. Colossus, too, was on his feet, already armoring up as he barreled through the door. Gambit had to grab his coat on the way out, which slowed him down.
The hallway was packed with running X-Men. Gambit dodged around Berserker, hopped onto the railing of the landing, and jumped down into the foyer. He landed in a crouch, letting his legs and spine absorb the shock of the impact.
He gritted his teeth and forced down the telepathic shields that protected his mind. They were his best, his strongest defense, but he needed to be hooked into the communications network to hear Cyclops's orders.
Colossus, check the dining room. Gambit, kitchen. Wolverine, library. I'll get the Professor's office. Regroup in the foyer when you're done.
Copy that, Colossus answered.
Right wit' you, Boss, Gambit added.
Check, said Wolverine.
Gambit turned and headed for the kitchen.
They breached the house. I can smell 'em, Wolverine informed them. Watch yourselves.
The lights were all out in the kitchen. The DEFCON barriers across the windows cut off any light from the sky outside. But Gambit could see more than just light: he could see heat, and radiation, and energy. The refrigerator, microwave, and range all glowed gently in the darkness. And the soldier crouched behind the table showed up like a neon sign.
Gambit charged a card and flicked it across the kitchen tabletop, trailing lurid orange fire. The soldier jumped from his cover and spattered the wall behind Gambit with a wide spray of bullets. Gambit dropped to the floor and covered his head as his card went off.
When he raised his head again, he reported, I have one down an' de kitchen is secure.
Two down, Colossus echoed. Dining room secure.
The entire house trembled underfoot, and heat flashed through the walls.
They're breachin' the library, Wolverine snarled.
They all heard Scott's command-voice crack into the outcry of an overwhelmed college student. Oh, crap. But it only lasted a heartbeat. Before Gambit had even had time to draw a breath, the order rang in his head: We're backing you up. Hold on.
Logan waited until all the kids were safely off to school, and not likely to return unexpectedly for forgotten backpacks, car keys, cell phones, or other excuses to avoid education, before he picked up the handset of the kitchen phone.
The man he was calling recognized the house's number. "Logan."
"Nick," Logan answered. "I need to cash in on some of those favors you owe me."
There followed one of those silences that was called 'pregnant' in old books as Nick Fury steeled himself for the kind of favor he could expect the Wolverine to demand. "Talk," he ordered at last.
"I don't give a curse what they're up to in Washington, but here in New York I got a couple dozen kids waking up with nightmares if we let 'em watch the news before they go to bed. I just need a heads-up from you. How far is this Creed guy planning to take this? Is he just trying to prove a point, or is this Registration Act just a paper foundation for an extermination order?"
"You know I don't mess with the politicians," Nick answered flatly. "I just take my orders."
"What I know is that you don't mess with the politicians unless you're pretty sure you won't get caught. And I'm not asking you to mess with anything. I just need to know if they're gearing up the military to move on the mutant population. I need to be ready. After everything I've done for you—"
"Not willingly."
"Not important. You are getting off easy with a little request like this. All I want to do is keep my kids safe. If I need to get 'em out, I need to know, now."
There was no sigh of resignation, no sound through the line that would indicate Fury giving in. "All right, Logan. Yes, I have what you need to know. And I'll give it to you. You just tell me one thing first."
"The spy plane, Mystique . . . after all this, you're still trying to negotiate with me?"
"This is not a negotiation. It's an ultimatum. You tell me where I can find Project X-23, and I'll tell you everything you've asked for."
This time it was Logan's turn to pause. "What?" he snarled, in the tone of voice that made lesser men buckle and do as they were told. Unfortunately for him, Fury was not one of these.
"One kid for fifteen. It's a good bargain for you."
"You're still beating that dead horse? Did your super-high-tech info-gathering network miss the big fireball that HYDRA went up in?"
"No, we saw it. It was a nice piece of work. But that kind of crash wouldn't have killed you, so it's a fair bet it didn't kill her. Of course, that's just an educated guess. You'd know better than we would."
He was fishing for information. Logan took a split-second to weigh the likely advantages of lying versus telling the truth. In the end, he chose the latter; it wasn't more than Nick already knew, or mostly knew. "Yeah. She got out. I saw her. But that was the last time I laid eyes on her. After that day, you know more than I do, probably."
"We know that if Creed has got it into his head to round up mutants, then SHIELD had better be sure that we get hold of X-23 before he does. And we know that in the last nine months there have been seven different strikes at facilities all over the world, looking for data on you. One-man strikes, same M.O., and one with a meat-fork puncture mark in the exterior wall of the building. She's active, and she's after you, Logan. And I know it."
"If she is after me, she's takin' a stupid way of doing it. She knows where I sleep."
"But do you know where she sleeps?"
"And if I did, why should I tell you? You're the one who owes me, remember."
"And I'd be glad to make up that debt, any other time, when the stakes aren't so high. But I can't afford to be a gentleman on this one. This is hardball. You tell me where she is, and I'll tell you everything you want to know. You really think that one science project gone wrong is more important than your students? Your children?"
"She's a child, too."
"Who would be safe at SHIELD. But if what's in the works goes through, the odds are very slim that all of your kids will be making it to their next birthdays. Some of those high schoolers are gonna die if you don't give me what I want, and it won't be my fault, Logan; it'll be yours."
Logan's grip tightened around the phone, as though it were closing around Nick's throat. "If one of those high schoolers dies, Nick Fury, you're next. I don't know where she is, and if I did, I wouldn't tell you. We're done."
"Logan, wait—"
He took the phone away from his ear, hit the OFF button with his thumb, and dropped it on the floor. The back panel was jarred off by the impact, and the battery flew out and skittered under the refrigerator. Logan left it there.
Logan? Charles inquired inside his head. He'd heard the clatter. What did you find out? Will SHIELD help us?
Logan took a second to scrub the stress off of his face. That's a big, fat NO, Chuck, he thought back. We're on our own.
And then he sat down at the kitchen table and spent a half hour pondering whether he'd just screwed them all over again.
The invaders had blown a hole in the shields over the library windows. It wasn't very big; it took tough stuff to breach a Xavier lockdown. But it was enough to let soldiers in, and in they came.
When Gambit made it in, there were already four bodies on the floor, and the room reeked of bitter, salty gunpowder and fresh blood. One of the bookcases was knocked over. The coffee table was broken into fragments. The sofas gave out little coughs of stuffing as bullets tore holes through the brocade upholstery.
This was their library. Their library. They did homework here, and sat around the fireplace on cold afternoons, and played board games on Sundays. There was a strict, life-or-death rule against bringing in cherry kool-aid, for fear that the red dye would stain the cream-colored carpet.
Good thing they weren't coming back here, because Gambit couldn't stand the thought of seeing this violated room by the light of day. There was no way this would ever be a safe place again.
Cyclops's red beams sliced through the room, accurate as sniper's bullets, knocking soldiers against the walls and scattering them on the floor. The second they hit the carpet, Wolverine was on them, claws flying. The gleaming blades weren't bluffing weapons tonight, or tools for opening soda cans on which the tabs had broken off. Wolverine held death in both his fists, and dispensed it without hesitation and without mercy. Blood coated his arms to the elbows, drenched his t-shirt, and splattered across his face.
Across the telepathic network, Gambit felt Cyclops hesitate. Logan didn't pause, but a thought flashed to them all: Rogue, Jean, and Kitty, captured by these invaders, locked up in secure government labs, tortured and vivisected, violated and murdered, their bodies cremated and their ashes dumped into the trash. Think about our girls.
Our girls. Gambit charged a spread of cards and dove into the fight.
Hank: "They can't possibly pass this legislation."
Professor X: "But if they do—"
Hank: "They won't. There's no way. Not in the United States of America."
Logan: "They said the same thing about the magnificent Third Reich."
Professor X: "If they do, we need to have a plan of action in place. Will we keep the school open?"
Storm: "We have to. For Scott, Rogue, and Gambit, at least. They don't have anywhere else to go."
Professor X: "But what about all the other students? Should we send them home? They'll certainly be less conspicuous in their own homes, but they'll also be significantly less defended."
Storm: "We're a team. We have to stick together, as much as we can. We can't stop the parents from ordering them home, but I think the more X-Men we have here, the safer we're all going to be."
Logan: "Are we talking about military action here? Defending the house? What's our last resort?"
Storm: "Please, Logan, don't be dramatic."
Logan: "I'm not being dramatic, I'm being practical. If we're gonna treat the house as a fortress under siege, we need to plan for that, and if we're gonna try to get the team out of the country, we need to plan for that, too."
Hank: "Do you really think they'll come after us in force just to make us register in some database, when we're already publicly known mutants? Surely if we re-assert our peaceful intentions, the worst they could do would be to arrest us."
Logan: "You're cute when you're naïve. I don't know what they plan to do. But I know I'm not lettin' 'em tag me."
Storm: "We can't let them register us. We are the most well-known mutants in the world. If we submit to this, then we are giving our consent to all the injustice and all the persecution that will inevitably follow. Someone has to make a stand, and we are the only ones who can."
Hank: "It won't pass. It can't."
Professor X: "Let's hope and pray that you're right. But in the meantime, Logan, you and I need to draw up a plan for an emergency evacuation of the Institute. Just in case."
The students, everyone from Scott to Jamie, sat in silence in Jean's bedroom. It was directly above Professor Xavier's office, and thus the most convenient place to use Gambit's limited-range eavesdropping gear. Having Kitty phase the receiver through most of the floor had helped a lot.
They were all thinking it, but Bobby was the first to say it. "Did that sound really bad to anybody else?"
"Go, go, go, come on!"
Bobby Drake didn't have any official leadership position in the X-Men. He was more than happy to leave the boring, stressful stuff to Scott. But it was an understanding, an unspoken rule, that if the younger students had a student body president, he was it.
And that was why he stopped at the corner of the hallway that hooked around the Danger Room and counted off his teammates as they sprinted by. Roberto, Amara, Sam, Jamie, Ray. Five. Everyone accounted for.
Bobby threw himself after them, bare feet giving him great traction on the cold smooth floor. Only two more corners to the hangar. And then they were out and away.
He didn't hear the hiss of the silenced weapon, but he didn't need to. The explosion of burning pain in the left side of his back was enough.
He was too old to scream when startled, but somehow the noise came out anyway as he slammed face-first into the floor.
Bobby?
Bobby?
Iceman!
Choking on pain and the possibility that he might puke, Bobby craned his head around. Red sticky awful nastiness was oozing across the floor under him. Around the corner, he caught a glimpse of black: the uniformed sniper that had hit him, crouched behind the shelter of the wall.
He tasted salt; blood was welling into his mouth. Sniper! Sniper, sniper!
Hold on, we're coming! Amara yelled back.
NO! Panic and pain and disgust were whiting out his brain, but the most important thoughts were standing out crystal-clear. He's waiting for you! I'm bait! That's why he hasn't shot me twice . . .
We're not leaving you here, moron, Ray snapped.
Bobby dug his toes into the floor and grabbed the surface in front of him with his sweaty, sticky palms and forearms. Blood was bubbling out of his nostrils as he breathed. If he could just belly-crawl around the corner, out of the sniper's range . . . He felt himself inch forward, smearing the blood across his abdomen. Too slow. He'd never have the strength to make it the ten feet to safety. Not in time.
A flush of cold shot through his whole body—not like icing up, not the familiar and comfortable chill of his own powers. This was the black chill of a risk-loving teenage boy who'd just realized that he was, this very morning, going to die.
"It's very important that all of you listen carefully to everything I'm about to tell you. If we have to use this plan, it needs to run like clockwork. The goal is to safely evacuate the mansion and move the entire team to Muir Island. That means that each one of you will have a job to do, and your teammates will be counting on you to accomplish it. Your lives are in one another's hands. There will be no grandstanding, no heroics, no improvisation; you must do your jobs and get out. Am I understood?"
Each of the X-Men nodded his or her consent. Even Bobby knew better than to complain right now.
"All right. If the house is breached, here's what will happen. First, when the sensors are tripped, the mansion will go into automatic DEFCON-4 lockdown. You've all seen it, I believe, except for perhaps Gambit and Colossus."
"I know it," Gambit told him.
"The house will be completely sealed. The only way in or out will be the main hangar. But before the barriers come down, Rogue and Storm need to be outside. You two will be the advance guard. It will be your job to keep any attacking aircraft at bay until both our planes are safely over international waters. Once there, we're under the jurisdiction of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and any actions against us will be an act of aggression against the U.N."
"Unless the U.N. declares us hostis humani generis, of course," Hank observed, "but they generally reserve that for torturers. Still, you never know."
Professor Xavier raised an eyebrow, and Hank closed his mouth and stopped being flippant.
"Cyclops, Wolverine, Gambit and Colossus, you four will be the rear guard. You're our strongest mêlée fighters. Your task is to keep back any invasion of the house until the X-Jet is safely in the air. Once it's clear, you'll fall back to the secondary hangar and leave in Velocity."
The four men nodded. They'd all seen bloody combat before, and knew that what they'd been called upon to do was no privilege. But they also knew that they had the best chance of holding back an assault.
"Hank."
"Yes, sir."
"Your task will be to cover our tracks behind us. Cerebro, the Danger Room, and the infirmary all have self-destructs rigged into them. You'll need to activate the countdowns, then rendezvous with the rear guard. We have backup copies of all the important data in the X-Jet, so don't try to salvage anything. Just get out."
"Yes, sir."
"Nightcrawler, I have a particular service to ask of you. I need you to get me to the X-Jet. I won't be able to make it there as quickly as the rest of you."
Kurt nodded. "You can count on me, Professor."
"Thank you. Jean and Shadowcat, you two will be our pilots. Jean will have the X-Jet, and Kitty will take Velocity. You'll both fly the second everyone who's supposed to be on board is there. If there are complications . . . the final decision of when to fly is yours. Use your judgment. Kitty, DEFCON-4 will lock down the hangar doors, so you'll have to phase the helicopter through. Can you do that?"
Kitty nodded. "I think so."
"Now, for you younger students. Your job is to get yourselves onto the X-Jet. Every second you delay will expose the advance guard and rear guard to greater danger. The plane needs to fly and you need to be on board. Am I understood?"
He made eye contact with each of the younger X-Men in turn, and held their gaze until they'd nodded and murmured their assent.
"While all of this is going on, I ll be maintaining telepathic communications across the entire team. Try not to use it unless you need to; the fewer people we have thinking at one another, the easier it will be for everyone. Now, once the X-Jet is airborne, Storm will escort it as far as the international boundary and then come inside. Rogue, you'll stay with Velocity until it, too, is clear, then catch up with the X-Jet. If, heaven willing, the helicopter is fully loaded, there won't be a seat for you in it."
Rogue nodded, her eyes straying across the group to linger on Logan, Hank, Scott, Piotr, and Remy. Three of them had been her teachers. All of them were her friends. And one had given her the ring she wore under her left glove. If, heaven willing, the helicopter is fully loaded . . .
She strayed back to Remy's eyes, and stayed there. They were fierce and bright as they bored into hers, but they made her no promises.
"We'll fly straight to Muir Island, and regroup there. There are coordinates in both aircraft. We'll be running drills of the whole evacuation plan over the next few weeks, so be prepared."
Author's Notes:
I wanted to post for Mardi Gras, but I got a little sidetracked making cajun food. Sorry. Happy Late Mardi Gras, everybody!
No French today, but here's some Latin . . .
hostis humani generis: "Enemy of mankind." A legal term, originally used for pirates, indicating that a criminal could be tried in any country by that country's own laws, whether his/her crime had been against that country or not.