Chapter 4

I'm gonna die right here on the floor in the basement . . .

Hold on, Sam ordered Bobby. I'm pickin' ya up.

No, Stupid, you'd have to stop to pick me up, and he can shoot you if you're not moving.

I'm quick.

He's a SNIPER! It's his JOB to be quicker than you!

I'll cover you. Under stress, Jamie's mental voice cracked just like his physical one.

Naw, Jamie, I got this. Get to the plane!

I am!

Bobby gave himself another shove. Nine feet to go.

Jamie came running around the corner, his babyish face white and determined. There was a hissing, zipping sound, and Jamie yelled . . . and vanished.

Another Jamie rounded the corner. And another. And another. Bullets flew, mowing them down almost as fast as they appeared, but Jamie could make copies faster than the sniper could aim and fire.

Heavier footsteps landed next to Bobby's head. Sam straddled him, grabbed him under the arms and around the chest . . . Bobby screamed bloody murder; he hadn't realized a billion deaths all together could hurt this bad . . . and launched himself like a rocket sled. He rebounded off the walls to make the turns without slowing down, twisting so he hit the metal surfaces with his upper back and the back of his head and not slowing down even a little bit as he aimed for the hatch of the plane.

Christmas afternoon. The normally-crowded house held only four: Professor Xavier, Hank, Gambit, and Rogue. Everyone else was home over the holiday—even Scott, who'd been invited to spend the vacation at Jean's house. And Logan was . . . somewhere. No one really knew where he went on Christmas.

In the rec room, Casablanca was playing on the big tv. Christmas-afternoon old movies were a McCoy family tradition that had been adopted by the Xavier household. Hank was glued to the screen, unashamedly enjoying himself though he could recite every line of the film already. On the floor, Rogue and Gambit sorted through a pile of CDs, loading music onto their new mp3 players with one of the house's laptop computers. Professor Xavier was taking phone calls.

No one really knew how this tradition had started up, or how it had become so pervasive. But everyone observed it, X-Men and former team members alike. Everyone called in to wish Professor Xavier a merry Christmas. So far, Kurt, Piotr, Tabby, Rahne, Kitty, and Storm had paid their respects, and many more would do likewise before the sun went down.

When the phone rang again, the caller i.d. registered Jean's parents' house. Hank paused the DVD, and the Professor put the call on speaker, knowing the students would want to exchange greetings as well. "Hello?"

"Merry Christmas, Professor Xavier!" Jean's bright, clear voice rang cheerfully through the room. Rogue was glad that Logan was still gone; the voice stung at the echoes of his consciousness in the back of her brain.

"Merry Christmas, Jean," Professor Xavier answered, smiling. "How is your holiday going?"

"Fantastic. We just got in from sledding, and dinner's almost ready . . . is Gambit cooking again over there?"

"It was either him or me," Hank quipped. "Lesser of two evils."

"Y'just jealous," Gambit accused good-naturedly.

"How's Scott doin' with your folks?" Rogue asked.

"He's great. My little sister's kicking his butt at Battleship." Jean's voice went muffled as she moved the receiver away from her mouth. "Scott, I called the house."

There was a crackling shuffle as the phone changed hands, and then Scott's voice emerged into the room. "Professor?"

"Merry Christmas, Scott!" Rogue cut in before anyone else could speak up. Scott was like a brother to her, her first and most constant friend since she'd come into the X-Men; the first holiday greeting belonged to her alone.

"Merry Christmas!" Scott chimed back. "What're you guys doing over there?"

"Watchin' movies and eatin' candy 'till we puke."

"Sounds like paradise."

"Well, Ah wanted to do sledding, too, but Gambit's got his whole 'Ah don't do snow' thing, so Ah'm just gonna have to wait 'till y'all get home."

"It's a date."

Rogue grinned, responding unconsciously to the smile she could hear in his voice.

"Rogue—" Scott added. "I love you. You're one of the best things that ever happened to the X-Men. Glad you joined. It wouldn't be the same without you, not by a long shot."

Rogue's grin got wider. She glanced at Gambit, expecting to see a scowl on his face. There was one, but it was just a joke; the left corner of his mouth was fighting to twist up into a smile. Homeless Rogue, orphan Rogue, foster-kid, prickly-as-a-hedgehog, don't-touch-me Rogue, was spending her Christmas surrounded by the abiding and unconditional love of her very own family. She was glowing, and she knew it; she could see it in her reflection gleaming in his eyes.

"Thanks, Scott. Thanks for everything. Seriously, Ah owe you everything. Wouldn't be an X-Man without you."

"Hey . . . is Gambit there, too?"

"Ouais," Gambit responded. "What's de orders, Fearless Leader?"

"No orders. Just . . . all that just goes for you, too. Glad you're on the team, Remy."

Rogue's eyes shot to Gambit's face, almost alarmed now. No one at the Institute, except herself, had ever called him Remy. Gambit, Cajun, Gumbo, Red-Eye, Swamp Rat . . . he responded to all these with perfect equanimity. But his Christian name had always been off-limits.

He blinked, startled, then let the fake-scowl relax into the slightest hint of a smile. "Thanks, Scott. Merry Christmas."

"Merry Christmas."

There were jumbled voices in the background, and Scott announced, "Dinner's ready. Talk to you guys later, okay?"

"Deal."

"See ya after vacation."

"Behave yourself."

"Merry Christmas, Scott! Merry Christmas, Jean!"

"Bye!"

The call ended with a soft click.

Hank settled back into his recliner, picking up the remote and freeing the pause on the DVD. "Can we make it though to the end before the next call? This isn't a piece of cinema that should be done in chunks."

The heavy thrum of the garage door opener came buzzing through the carpets. Logan was home. Rogue could hear the squeak of the door as he walked through it into the kitchen, the clatter of his keys on the counter, the thuds of his boots on the tile floor.

"Logan, you're just in time!" Hank called over his shoulder. "Last ten minutes of Casablanca."

"Gotta shower," Logan's voice echoed back.

"We'll pause it and wait for you."

"Don't."

"It's an American classic!"

"Not an American," Logan reminded him. There was another slammed door from somewhere in the house, and silence echoed in its wake.

"No appreciation for great cinema," Hank muttered, despairing. "He's hopeless."

The phone rang again. Professor Xavier picked it up, frowning thoughtfully as he read the caller i.d. "Unknown number," he murmured, pressing 'Talk' and bringing the handset to his ear. "Hello?"

"Merry Christmas, Charles," said a man's voice, loud and deep enough that all four of them heard it. They also heard the click immediately following as the call cut off.

Don't panic, don't panic, don't panic. Jean strapped her harness across her chest and started up the pre-flight. Stay calm. We're getting out of here. Just do your job.

She spared a glance for the Professor in the co-pilot's seat, being buckled in by Kurt. His eyes were glassy with concentration. Holding open a seventeen-mind communication net left very little energy for anything else. Jean was on her own.

There was a rush of displaced air through the plane, and she reached out telekinetically just in time to catch Sam before he smashed through the windshield. He had Bobby in his arms, but the Iceman's mischievous face was pale with pain, and most of the rest of him was red-brown. He'd been shot through the side.

"Ray, get the first aid kit!" Amara ordered. She reached for her seat belt.

"No, not yet!" Jean ordered. Her hands were flying over the controls, closing the loading hatch and opening the hangar doors. "Stay put. We're taking off. Bobby, try to ice up." She reached behind herself, pinning Bobby to the floor of the plane and doing what she could to hold back the bleeding. "Hold on, you guys!"

He's bleeding!" Ray protested.

"We've got to get out of here or we're all going to die. Just hold on."

We're flying, she announced to Storm and Rogue. Get out of the way.

Good luck, Rogue thought back at her.

Jean could see silver-gray sleet coming down in sheets, and lighting spiking across the sky. She gunned the engine and flung the plane forward, accelerating too hard, trying not to wince as Bobby cried out in pain.

Just get in the air. Just go. Don't look back.

Logan was hunting.

Not hunting for food, or for targets. Just practice-hunting. Being-outside-hunting. Hunting for clarity.

He'd been tracking a doe for three hours, following her through the heavy New England woods and across the fields and freeways of the county. When she stopped to graze, he stalked her, moving in impossible silence until he was close enough to touch her. He laid one hand against her side and held it there for one long, breathless, second, before she finally startled and leaped away.

Logan, satisfied, stood up from his crouch and turned to walk back home.

It was nearly dawn when he made it back onto the grounds. He was tired, but it was a good, whole sort of tired. It was Sunday, so there was no training, no school . . . nothing to keep him from just going to bed, strange though the hour was.

Then he crossed a scent he didn't know.

There were three of them, all men. Their scent trail wound across the grounds, carefully avoiding the laser triggers that would activate the house's defense grid. It stopped at the kitchen door. The three invaders had halted there and then retraced their steps.

Logan went inside and woke up Hank.

"C'mere. I need a second opinion on something."

With a yawn that showed all of his deadly teeth, Hank rolled out of bed and padded behind Logan back to the kitchen. "Did you even go to sleep at all last night?"

"Not really." Logan opened the back door and pointed to the scent trail. "Smell that."

Hank smelled. His sense of smell wasn't as acute as Logan's, and he wasn't as experienced in tracking, but he was the only person in the house who could even begin to understand what Logan was talking about.

"Three men," he muttered. "How did they come so close to the house?"

"They were good. Very, very good. Dodged every sensor. What I want to know is why they came so far, then stopped right here."

Hank raised himself up to his full height, which was a great deal taller than Logan's, and sniffed the air. "One of them touched the top of the door frame." He ran his fingers across the stonework that framed the door. "Wait a minute. What's this?"

Logan looked at it, then snarled. "I'll go wake up the swamp rat."

He did this by yanking Gambit's pillow out from under his head and hitting him with it. "What's the ace-and-X thing you blew in the door frame?"

Gambit groaned and pulled the blankets up over his head. "Seventh commandment," he muttered belligerently.

"'Thou shalt not commit adultery'?" Hank asked.

Gambit peeked his head out. His eyes were bleary and only half-open. "What's de one about not wakin' people up on Sunday?"

"Four."

"Ouais, dat one."

Logan yanked his blankets off him, watching the thief flinch and curl up like a disturbed potato bug. "Somebody came onto the grounds last night, but they stopped short of breakin' into the house when they saw that mark. What is it?"

Remy groaned as he reluctantly pulled himself into a sitting position. "It's my sign. My logo. I put it over de door to put de house under my professional protection." He blinked a few times and combed his long, disheveled hair back off his face.

"Protection from who?"

"Whom," Hank corrected.

"Other Guild T'ieves. No Guild T'ief would dare break a house dat's got a Master's sign on it."

"In that case, you mind speculating on what Guild Thieves were doing in our backyard last night?"

This finally seemed to interest Gambit more than the prospect of going back to bed. "De Guild was here?" He swung his feet onto the floor and grabbed for his coat. "Show me."

Corporal Greg Mangum hadn't wanted this assignment. He wasn't interested in ethical dilemmas about who had which rights to what. That's why he'd joined the Marines. There were never any decisions to make, never any questions to ask. You did what you were told. The right and wrong of it was on your commander's head, not yours.

But it was hard to absolve himself of responsibility as he read over the mission briefs. Things kept jumping out at him: ages of fourteen, sixteen, nineteen, names like Summers and Monroe, notes like state basketball championships and 3.4 GPA. These were kids. Middle-class, American high school kids. He'd seen soldiers that young in Afghanistan, but somehow that was different. Maybe it shouldn't be . . . maybe he shouldn't feel more concerned about a white kid from upstate New York than a brown-skinned kid from the Kumar province . . . but that was how he felt.

But feelings didn't matter in the Marines. Orders did. And his orders were to use lethal force. These were mutants, he'd been told. He couldn't afford to be merciful. They didn't have the firepower; they didn't have the time.

So he shoved his feelings to the back of his mind as he threw himself forward into the gap the ballistics guys had blown in the house's armor.

What he saw inside, he never forgot.

There were only four of them . . . only four! Against dozens of the best troops the U.S. Military had to offer! . . . but each one was a nightmare in his own right. There was a soldier, upright and grim, as detached and professional as Greg wished he could be . . . a tank in human form, his limbs gleaming metal and his blank white eyes devoid of humanity . . . a snarling animal with deadly claws soaked in blood . . . and a red-eyed demon straight from Hell that trailed flames from its fingertips.

The sight of them was enough to stop him in his tracks. And his split-second hesitation was enough time for the metal one to crack his head against the wall.

He woke up in a hospital bed a week later. He was one of the lucky ones.

"Remy LeBeau to see the Guildmaster," the receptionist announced, ushering Gambit into the Guildmaster's large and well-appointed office.

The man that stood up from behind the large and intimidating oak desk was a stranger to him. Remy had only met Guildmaster Wheeler once, when he'd presided at Remy's advancement to the rank of Master, but he'd made a point of remembering the face of the man in whose territory he was living. He'd never seen the person who greeted him now.

"Came t'speak to de guildmaster," Remy clarified.

"Not possible," said the man behind the desk. "He's out of town on business. You'll have to make do with me." He gestured to a chair, indicating that Remy should sit in it.

Remy didn't. Instead, he asked, "And just who'm I makin' do wid?"

"Nathan Archibald," announced the other flatly. "I'm Guildmaster Wheeler's second, and I'm in charge until he gets back." He nodded to the chair again, and Remy sat.

After a moment of silence that dragged on for a peculiarly long stretch, Remy opened with "I assume y'know who I am."

"You assume right." Archibald settled back into the Guildmaster's chair. "So what is it that you want?"

"I come t'look into de New York Guild's sudden lack'a good manners," Remy retorted. "Maybe it's just a southern thing, but where I come from, when a guild accidentally takes a job on somethin' protected by a Master T'ief, dey let de Master T'ief know about it. Professional courtesy."

"What are you implying?" Archibald shot back.

"Well, if implications is to fancy for ya, lemme lay it out flat. Guild t'ieves tried t'move on my house Sunday mornin'. Nobody else would'a turned back when dey saw de house was under a master's mark. If it was some other guild, dey would'a let New York know before pullin' a job in dey territory. So I wanna know who ordered de job on my house, an' why ain't nobody called to tell me about it."

Archibald lounged back in the chair, too deliberately, too self-consciously; if it had really been his own chair, his posture would have been less forced. "You weren't called, LeBeau, because I didn't consider this guild's confidential contracts to be any of your business. I know who you are . . . the out-on-his-ear second son of one of the oldest and most respected thieving families in the U.S. The upstart kid who's got the nerve to parade in here, claiming the privileges of a title he got through a loophole and daddy's influence. Those of us who worked years to become masters are understandably a little annoyed at being expected to kowtow to a twenty-something who thinks that six months of party tricks puts him in a position to be demanding anything from the guilds."

Gambit took a deep breath through his nose, held it, and let it out slowly. Yeah, the guy was pushing his buttons, and doing it well. Yeah, Rogue would probably have broken his neck already. But he'd learned from experts . . . Wolverine and Magneto, primarily . . . the value of keeping your cool and walking away with the last laugh.

He stood up. He was tall, and knew how to make the most of it, leaning forward over the desk. "Well, monsieur. Dat's quite de opinion you got dere. But inasmuch as y'can't cut out a Mark wid a sharp tongue, an'inasmuch as yo'years of hard, butt-bustin' work ain't put you in charge of dis or any other guild, I'll thank you t'keep yo'opinions to you'self. Now unless you want me reportin' you to your guildmaster fo' underminin' his decisions and failin' to respect the set lines of authority, you'll tell me what I came here t'find out, and while y'do it, you'll be addressin' me as Master LeBeau."

Archibald stood, too. Remy had two inches on him. Archibald was older and could pull rank but Remy knew exactly what he was entitled to by virtue of his mark, and no temporary replacement guildmaster had the authority to deny him any of it.

Archibald broke first. It was inevitable.

"The job on your home," he informed Remy, "was ordered and paid for by Senator Graydon Creed."

Crap. Team Leadership was not going to be happy about that. "What was de target?"

"It was a high-security job. The team had sealed instructions, not to be opened until they were inside the house. When they were unable to complete the job, the instructions were returned."

Dramatic, but not an uncommon practice, provided someone was willing to pay for that level of privacy. Didn't matter. There was enough inside the mansion that Creed might want to get his hands on. The guilds didn't do kidnapping, which was a small comfort . . . but the senator was breathing down their necks, and he was doing it outside the bonds of the law. If he'd paid for the Guild, what else was he willing to do?

"Anything else . . . Master LeBeau?" Archibald asked, his voice twisted with sarcasm.

"Yes, actually. I got some documents I need made up. I'd thank you for the name and number of somewhere I could go for good, quality U.S. passports."

Author's Notes:

Only one French word in this chapter, which is ouais, 'yeah.'

I know, I know, not a lot of forward progress in this chapter . . . I swear I'll update again quickly, and that this next chapter will wrap up the jumping around and bring us back into linear time. Cross my heart. Y'all have the patience of saints.

Seri