Chapter 14

Rogue hovered outside the window of a penthouse apartment so high off the ground that it almost gave her vertigo. Kurt was clinging to the wall above the window frame, upside-down, cautiously peering inside.

"See anything?" he asked.

"Nothin'."

"Should I just port us in? Ve can leave a note on the mirror in lipstick."

"You got any lipstick?"

"No. Okay, bad plan."

"No kidding. A place this expensive is gonna be crawling with security. Probably motion sensors inside."

"Can you get past them?"

"Of course not!"

"I just thought, vit Gambit in your head so much . . ."

"Ah picked up enough from him to know they're there, not to know what to do about it."

"So vhat do we do about it?"

Rogue sighed, resting her elbows on the stone sill and her chin on her hands. "Go get some dinner? Find a place to sleep? With the money we can't afford to part with, or at the houses of friends we don't have?"

"You sure he still lives here?"

"It says 'Worthington' in big huge letters on the roof. Yeah, Ah'm pretty sure."

The main door of the apartment swung open. Rogue ducked, leaving only her eyes and forehead visible over the bottom of the window. But when she saw a familiar figure walk inside, stripping off hat, goves, and scarf, she raised herself back up again. "That's him!"

She rapped her knuckles on the glass pane. "Warren!"

The tall, broad-shouldered, golden-haired man turned around, caught sight of the two faces peering at him through the window, stared for a second, and then crossed to the window to pull it open. "Rogue? Is that you?"

"Let us in, will ya? It's freezing out here!"

He obediently stepped back. Rogue slipped inside, and Kurt scrambled after her, crawling onto the ceiling like a lizard before dropping onto the carpet.

Incredulously, Warren checked out of the window, as though to reassure himself that his apartment was still several dozen stories off the ground. "Since when can you fly?" he asked Rogue, fastening the window shut again.

"Two years, two and a half," Rogue estimated absently. "Uh, Warren, this is my brother, Kurt . . . Kurt, Warren . . ."

"Nice to meet you," Kurt offered. "Great apartment."

"Thanks," Warren answered politely, still trying to work out just what Kurt was. "Nice, um, fur."

"Thanks. Ze ladies love it, but you wouldn't believe how fast I go through conditioner."

"We came to see if you were okay," Rogue finished.

Warren snorted. "You came to see if I'm okay? Aren't you the ones who had a military strike on your house! And wasn't that Scott on the news getting arrested at the press conference?"

"Oh, that went down okay?" Kurt asked. "That's good news."

"You've got a weird definition of good news," Warren sighed. "Well, you'd better sit down and tell me what you're doing in my neck of the woods, and if you have any other 'good news' I should know about. Have you had dinner?"

"No," said Rogue.

"Or lunch," Kurt added.

"I'll call out for something." Warren snagged a remote off his cream leather sofa and pointed it at the fireplace, which blossomed into cheerful yellow flames. "Have a seat and get warm. Hanging around outside my window with no coats on probably wasn't any fun."

Say what you would about Warren's refusal to join the X-Men—the man was an excellent host. Forty-five minutes later, Kurt and Rogue were wrapped in a blanket apiece, almost warm enough to be uncomfortable in the heat of the fire, picking at the last of a generous spread of high-end delivery Chinese food with unevenly split wooden chopsticks. Rogue gave him a thorough run-down of what had been going on, going into more detail than they had with the few other people they'd managed to find that evening.

"So, wait . . . Magneto's been moved over into the 'good guys' camp?" Warren asked, his eyebrows raising.

"No," Rogue deadpanned.

"Not really," Kurt amended, ever more generous than his fierce, unforgiving sister. "It just worked out that . . . vell . . . ve don't have a lot of other options right now."

"He's playin' a game, just like the rest of us," Rogue accused. "But . . . he's kinda right, at least a little. A lotta mutants gotta get themselves out of the country, fast, if they don't wanna end up in labs and prisons. And he was prepared. He had a place to go. That's more than the X-Men ended up with."

"And that's the invitation you're extending?"

"Yeah. No big leather sofas, but at least it's safe. For now."

"And you can't beat ze view," Kurt added.

Warren leaned back into the cushions of his sofa. He'd changed from his business suit and winter coat into sweatpants and a t-shirt with an oval cut out of the back to allow for his enormous white wings. They were draped over the back of the couch, and rustled whenever he shifted position. "I'm not going to lie about it . . . getting out has its appeal right now." He leaned forward again, to pick up the crystal glass with its inch of amber liquid he'd left on the coffee table. He took a mouthful of it, swallowed thoughtfully, and elaborated. "I haven't been able to, you know, get out since all the fuss started up. Being able to help people was a big part of what kept me from going crazy with these things." He spread his wings a little bit, for emphasis, then let them fall again. "And then there's my dad. I don't know if you guys know, but my father's one of the men who paid for the Mutant Registration Act."

"But doesn't he know you're a mutant?" Kurt asked.

"Oh, he knows. He's just not happy about it. He wouldn't turn me in . . . bad for his reputation . . . but if the public ever found out about my mutation, he wouldn't raise a hand to help me."

"So ditch him," Rogue advised. "Ah would."

"I would, too. But the problem's the money. He still controls everything. Put one feather out of line, and I'm cut off—probably for good." He tossed back the rest of the whiskey, too fast, and flinched a little as it burned him on the way down. "But that's the way it's been for a long time, and I'm sick of it. It's about time I fought. The only question is: what's going to be more useful to your team? An X-Man with wings . . . or a herd of very expensive lawyers?"

"Lawyers?" Rogue echoed.

"Scott just got himself tangled up in the trial of the century. And I just happen to have a legal team on retainer, who really aught to be doing some actual work. So what do you think?"

Rogue looked at Kurt; he looked back at her. Smiles were starting to spread across their faces.

"Zat . . . sounds great," Kurt managed at last.

"Good. I'll make some phone calls, get some people out of bed. What else do you two need? A place to stay tonight? There's a guest bedroom, and the couch. And you could probably use, what, cell phones, credit cards, a change of clothes?"

"Ah'd thank you for a shower," said Rogue.

"First door on the left."

Rogue sat back and stared at him. "Warren," she said at last, "you're a godsend."

Warren's wings re-settled, giving him the look of an eagle fretting a little on its perch. "Yep. I've heard that before."

Gambit parked the car at the end of one of the rock-strewn dirt roads that cris-crossed the woods behind the Institute. Before waking Kitty, he destroyed both license plates and the bar code on the inside of the driver's door. It wouldn't prevent the car from being identified, but it would slow matters down a little.

He opened the passenger door and crouched down, eye-level with the unconscious Kitty. "Hey, Petite. Rise an' shine." He put a hand on her shoulder and gave her a gentle shake.

Kitty moaned and opened her eyes, and a picture flickered across the inside of Gambit's eyelids, of the way Rogue looked at just that moment of stirring into wakefulness. The resemblance only lasted a heartbeat, because as soon as Kitty was awake enough to realize that she'd been asleep, she jumped into full consciousness, and would have fallen out of the car if she hadn't been buckled in. "What time is it?" she gasped, fumbling for her seat belt.

"'Bout one a.m. We're about two miles off de grounds, I guess." He stood up, giving her room to leave the car.

"Why didn't you wake me up? I would've driven for a while."

"Nah. Didn' wanna spoil your record of never havin' driven a stolen car. An' plus, I don't trust yo'drivin."

"Ha." Kitty locked and closed the door, flicking her head to clear sleep out of it. "So how are we doing this?"

"I thought it out. When you phased, you kin only go down, right? No climbin' sans stairs or such?"

"No, not really. I was working on it with Storm, but we hadn't gotten very far, and with another person . . ."

"Okay." He took a second to review his plans, one hand scrubbing absently at his jaw (he needed to shave; he was probably starting to look like a hobo), then nodded briskly. "Okay. We movin' quick wid no lights out here, so hang onto my coat, comprends?"

"Got it." Kitty grabbed onto his sleeve and knotted her fingers into the fabric.

He tried to guide her along the smoothest track through the woods, having compassion on her limited vision. Other than a few stumbles, which she bore with admirable silence (if she hadn't been holding onto him, he wouldn't have known she'd fallen), they made it to the edge of the grounds.

The lawn was floodlit. "Dey expectin' us back," Gambit breathed, crouched in the deep shadows underneath a towering oak.

"There're soldiers on patrol," Kitty whispered back, nodding at the two-man team just disappearing around the edge of the house. "They've got guns." She tugged a little on his coat, and he turned to face her. "Gambit," she asked, awkwardly, "Do you want . . . do you want to use my powers? Just in case? There're guns . . ."

Gambit shook his head. "I'll be fine. T'inquiète pas."

"How're we going to get to the house?"

"Pipes." Gambit pointed off to their left, away from the house. At the very edge of the lawn, a length of pipe, about two feet high, stuck up from the grass. "Dat's de vent for de fan system dat keeps it from smellin' like a cave down under de house. A straight-on guide to de utility hatch behind de Danger Room."

"Wow. I didn't realize the basement was that big."

"It's huge. Wait 'till dat team passes, an' we go."

"Won't they see us?"

"Walkin' around in all dat light? Not enough night vision t'spot a bright orange elephant. Speakin' of, keep your eyes on de grass a second. Gonna be dark downstairs, too."

Kitty obediently ducked her head. "Just tell me when to go," she requested.

"Yeah."

"Gambit . . . I'm really glad you're here, and you know what you're doing."

Gambit choked back a snort of laughter. "Is dat how it looks to you?" Before she could answer, he took her hand. "Ready . . . now."

Only seconds behind the patrol team that had just passed them, the two young mutants broke cover and ran for the vent pipe. The ground they traversed was covered in snow, but it had been trampled flat by dozens of army boots. Kitty skittered a little as she brought them to a halt just short of the pipe, then took a deep breath and dropped, letting her arms come up over her head as though she were doing a feet-first surface dive in the pool. Gambit followed suit, keeping a tight grip on her hand.

They sank much quicker than they would have in water, the dirt flickering past Gambit's eyes in an unsettling blur of blackness. Jealous as he was of Kitty's undeniably useful power, he didn't envy her having to do these dives into what one flinch could make into an early grave.

But she knew what she was doing, and before he knew it the darkness had peeled away from his eyeballs and he was blinking in the dim light of the little green and red bulbs on the control panel of the heating system.

He sucked in a breath of air, enjoying the comforting solidity of the floor under his feet. Kitty was already recovered and had her orientation back. "Okay, Danger Room's through this wall, right?"

"Ouais. Be ready t'keep us phased—all de C4 Beast blew in dere probably made a mess t'tell de grandkids about."

Kitty stuck her head through the wall, then pulled him through after her.

The good news was that the Danger Room was empty of anyone besides themselves. It was, however, full of everything else. The floor was covered with the broken arms and claws and blades of the training equipment, blown-off chunks of the walls and ceiling. The observation room lay in a twisted pile of metal and glass in the middle of the middle of the space, fitting almost neatly into the crater the C4 had left. The door to the hallway had been cut off its hinges, leaving a gaping hole.

"Oh my gosh," said Kitty.

"Hush now," said Gambit. "Go quick."

Kitty led the way, more confident than he was that they would continue to run through everything and not into it. Gambit kept up, his phased feet making no noise against the floor. They slid through the far wall and into the smaller but equally wrecked medical bay.

"I can't see a thing."

"I can." Gambit dropped her hand. "Just hold still un moment." He jumped over a pile of rubble that had been the counter top and started digging as quietly as possible through the mess. "Ah, le voilà."

One of the exam tables was still intact, flipped onto its side. He braced his foot against one of the legs and pulled it upright, then glanced up at the ceiling, getting his bearings. "Okay. We go up right here an' we come up right in de Professor's little kitchenette."

"Why don't we go up right into the cellar-thing? It's be safer. The medical bay goes that far, right?"

"Yes, it does. But I need t'get up, too, an' dey ain't no room fo'me in dere." He climbed up onto the table and beckoned to her. "C'mon."

"What do you need to get up for? Can't you just stay here?"

"Nope. Get up here. Russian fastball."

Kitty stumbled to the table, and Gambit helped her up. With her grabbing his shoulders for balance, he bent down and guided her randomly waving foot into the stirrup made by his interlaced fingers. Just like Colossus tossing her in the pool, Gambit pitched Kitty straight up into the ceiling. He saw her legs flail for a few seconds, then pull up and disappear. A few seconds later, her head, shoulder, and arm reappeared, grabbing for his upraised hand and pulling him after her.

The little kitchenette, in stark contrast to the rest of the house, was all but intact. The explosions had knocked a few things off shelves, leaving shards of glass and porcelain scattered across the floor, but other than that the environment was relatively normal. The only door from it led into the office, but through the back wall the tramp of boots echoed.

Gambit snuck a look into the Professor's office. The military had moved in; a command computer had been plopped onto the big oak desk, and papers and photographs lay scattered around it. The DEFCON barriers still covered the windows. The door was open. The patrol walked by, then back.

"Kin you see de desk?" he whispered.

"Only a little. But I know where it is. But where are you going?"

"Upstairs. One little t'ing I forgot to grab on our way out."

"You can't get upstairs! You'll get shot! And didn't you blow up the big staircase?"

"Not takin' de stairs. Goin' up de dumbwaiter."

"We have a dumbwaiter?"

The patrol team passed the door again. Gambit shoved her. "Go! I'll be back; meet me right here."

Kitty scrambled across the floor and slithered down, disappearing into the thick pile of the carpet. Gambit turned to the back wall of the kitchen.

The Xavier mansion was old, and over the course of its history it had been remodeled, re-formed, and expanded at least half a dozen times. Gambit, who'd made an art form of sneaking in and out of the place, knew more nooks and crannies than even Professor Xavier had ever explored. In some earlier generation, the kitchen had been where the medical bay was now. And there had been a dumbwaiter, a hand-cranked tiny elevator shaft running through the kitchen and up to the second floor. It had been forgotten, wallpapered over. But Gambit had found it, as a discrepancy in the width of the kitchenette's back wall and the depth of the hall closet, and explored it.

He fished his jack knife from his pocket, tapping with the first knuckle of his other hand at the back wall. The dumbwaiter shaft echoed dully in response. He slipped the blade underneath the papering and drew it down until it found the seam where he'd cut the door open the last time. There aught to be a groove here, cut into the wood with this same knife . . . it slipped in, and he pulled back, swinging open his expressway to any level of the house.

The shaft itself was barely three by three—just big enough for him to brace his feet against the sides and shimmy upward. Not dignified, but then, thieving often wasn't. It wouldn't take Kitty more than a few minutes to copy those files, so he had to move fast.

His luck held; when he pushed open the dumbwaiter door on the second floor, the hallway was empty. The footsteps still reverberated downstairs, as did men's voices. He snaked onto the floor and climbed to his feet, closing the door behind him. There were troops downstairs, troops outside; they were focusing on the entrances and exits, still thinking like they were fighting humans. But there'd be a patrol up here in a couple of minutes, and he had to be back down in the (relative) safety of the kitchenette.

Rogue's room. The big, once-tidy and comfortable space had been ransacked, the comforting magnolia-scent of Rogue and strawberry-scent of Kitty overlaid by grease and bitter, acrid gunpowder. The beds had been stripped of their sheets, the mattresses and box springs sliced open, the dresser drawers pulled out and dumped. Kitty's laptop was nowhere to be seen.

Where was the coat? Rogue always hung it on the post at the foot of her bed, but it wasn't there now. He dove into the pile of clothes, tossing each article of clothing behind him as he rejected them as not what he was looking for. Why did these two have so many clothes?

His hand brushed an unfamiliar fabric. He pushed away the sweatshirt he'd been fishing under and found an entire outfit, still grouped together on one hangar, just as it had been tossed by some army goon. Folded over the bottom of the hangar was a pair of pants, in what he could have sworn, if he hadn't known better, was black vinyl, and suspended from hangar straps was a tube top (a tube top! and way too short to cover much) in forest green. A short brown jacket hung over both pieces, and a studded collar with matching arm bands were slung over the hook.

Several somethings inside Remy's brain overloaded and then exploded. How could Rogue own this? And how could he not have known about it? And . . . his eye caught a glint; he grabbed for it and . . . and how could Kitty own almost the exact same outfit, two sizes smaller?

That settled it. He had to get Rogue back. Because these clothes needed a long and thorough explanation, preferably with visual aids.

No time. He shoved his hands into the pile of clothes until he felt the rough olive-green Korean-War-surplus canvas of the jacket Delphine had given to Rouge. Got it. He shrugged out of his own coat, stripped off the sweater he'd bought in DC, pulled her jacket on his own shoulders and donned his coat over it. The arrangement was a little bulky, but it was warm, and it kept his hands free.

Nothing to it. Now he just had to meet up with Kitty, get out, and make the rendezvous with the plane. He'd be safe on the station, unconscious in his not-very-comfortable bed, sleeping all this off, by six. Comfort level of the bed aside, that was a very appealing prospect.

He left the door ajar, just as it had been, and wiggled his way back into the claustrophobic dumbwaiter shaft. Getting down was easier than getting up: just a controlled slide, with the rubber bottoms of his shoes acting as brakes. And when he reached the kitchenette, he discovered that he had, despite his fears, been fast enough; Kitty wasn't out yet.

The patrol was up by the stairs, well out of the way. Gambit came to the doorway and glanced into the office. No light, no movement. He crouched down onto his heels and waited.

It couldn't have been more than two minutes (he heard the patrol heading back towards the dining room) before Kitty's head popped up through the carpet behind the professor's desk. Her arms pulled out next, and as she levered herself up on her elbows he saw that her right fist was closed tight. She had the USB drive, and if she was holding it that tightly, it had something on it worth protecting.

In a second, both her feet were clear of the floor and she was lying stomach-down. She raised her head and caught his eye, then scrambled gracelessly to her feet and ran towards him.

The sound was tiny—if the house hadn't been so quiet he would've had no chance of hearing it. It was a small, sharp, compressed-air sound, like someone trying to hold in a sneeze. He knew what it was, but by the time he heard it, it was already too late. Kitty arched backwards, her whole body twisting as her forward momentum tried to overwhelm the reverse movement of all the muscles in her back and neck seizing up. The little silver dart sticking out of her carotid artery gleamed as she fell.

Gambit flicked a card from his pocket and flung it at the hallway, where he could just see the warm glowing profile of the gunman who'd been hidden from him by the insulation of the wall. The throw was arched just right; the card exploded in the guy's face with the power of a decent hand grenade, and even before it went off Gambit was scrambling to where Kitty had fallen.

"Kitty!"

Her eyes were still half-open; the dart hadn't knocked her out all the way. "Gambit . . ." Her lips barely moved around the word.

He grabbed at her arm, ready to heft her up onto his shoulder and carry her out . . . which way, he didn't know . . . but his hand went clean through her. She was phased.

There were shouts now; that explosion had attracted a lot of attention. Gambit made another grab for her shoulder, but with no better results. "Kitty! Snap out of it, Minou . . . we gotta go. Come on!"

"What happened . . ." Her voice was no stronger than a sigh.

"Unphase, Petite. Unphase. Go solid. You kin do it! Wake up, I gotta get you out of here!"

"Nothing . . . nothing can hurt me . . ."

The voices were louder now. Gambit's head snapped up of his own accord, his body switching from 'fight' into 'flight' as his role switched from stealthy predator to cornered prey. he forced his attention back down, away from the door, towards his fallen teammate. "Not leavin' wid'out you, Kitty, so come on, wake up or go under but don't just lie there!"

No time. No plan. Everything that he could think of to do was impossible as long as Kitty stayed phased. He couldn't move her, couldn't pull out the dart, couldn't drain away her powers to force her to go solid . . . couldn't even take the USB drive they'd risked their necks for . . .

He bent his head down next to her ear. "Shadowcat, listen t'me now. Drop de drive. De USB in yo'hand . . . drop it. I kin finish dis mission, give us our only chance t'save de world, save our family . . . but you gotta let go'a dat drive, petite, come on. Come on!"

Kitty choked in a breath of air, her drooping eyes suddenly snapping open wide, too wide . . . and her right hand convulsed, letting the little black USB drive fall onto the floor.

Gambit swept it into his pocket. He hurriedly kissed the first two fingers of his left hand and set them where her forehead should have been. "I'm comin' back for you," he promised, and then he vanished like a shadow down the trapdoor.

Author's notes:

Comprends?: Understand?

T'inquiète pas: Don't worry.

le voilà: There it is!

And yep, the author does remember that according to X-Men tradition, a 'Russian Fastball' involves Piotr throwing Logan, not Kitty, but what's the fun of writing Evo if you can't tweak history a little bit?