Chapter 15
Scott had been given a cell of his own. It wasn't a privilege; his repeated attempts to explain why he refused to open his eyes had gotten him branded belligerent and aggressive, on top of being a dangerous mutant in the first place, and he was now in maximum security—solitary confinement. Which, as far as he was concerned, was great.
He'd torn a strip off the pant cuff of his brand-new prison jumpsuit and tied it around his eyes. It had happened a few times when he'd first come to the Institute that he'd jumped awake, out of some nightmare, and blown a hole in the ceiling or the wall. He couldn't afford such a slip-up right now. And the pressure of the bandage kept his eyelids from flickering, which they did a lot whenever he was awake and alert and voluntarily blinded.
It had been an exhausting day. For hours, he'd been interrogated and "processed" . . . fingerprinted, photographed, weighed and measured, stripped and searched, and bullied endlessly about his eyes, his eyes, his eyes. Apparently eye color was a crucial piece of information for being booked into prison, and no one would take his word for it that they'd been brown the last time he'd checked. But finally, after hours, it had ended, and he'd been left here, in a cell of his very own, to wait for whatever would come next.
He had no idea what time it was, but he felt himself stirred out of sleep by the familiar pull of a telepathic mind. He stirred and moaned a little, a slow, sleepy smile dragging across his face. Hey.
Hey, the whisper echoed back inside his mind. You can hear me?
Well, I've had a lot of practice listening to telepaths, you know. I'm glad you're here . . . I miss you.
I didn't mean to wake you up.
It's okay. His hand reached out unthinkingly, wishing more than expecting to feel her sitting on the edge of his bed. So are you still mad at me?
No, I'm not. I've calmed down. But I am worried about you.
I'm doing fine. Nice, safe prison cell. Of the two of us, you're probably in more danger right now. Are you two doing okay?
Yes, we're fine. We're fine. Don't worry about us.
Where are you?
I'm . . . not really sure, actually.
Typical Logan, huh?
Completely.
Scott let the silence drag for a moment, enjoying the safe, comforting feeling of having her inside his mind with him. It was like cuddling on the couch, only long-distance.
I should let you go to sleep, she whispered at last. You'll need it.
I hate it when you're right. He rolled onto his side and settled his head onto his arm. Check in when you can, okay? But don't crack your head open.
I'll be all right.
I love you.
I love you.
Scott was asleep again within minutes.
There had been a routine in the Xavier Mansion—a certain sequence of events that often fell into place on weekend nights, one that Rogue hadn't been able to approve of but couldn't bring herself to forbid.
It went something like this. Colossus had always been, and always would be, the early-to-bed-and-early-to-rise sort, so on Fridays and Saturdays when bedtime wasn't enforced and most of the X-Men stayed up watching movies, he excused himself early on and went upstairs.
Rogue wasn't nearly as responsible, but she was no night owl either, and more often than not she found herself drifting in and out of consciousness as the conversation and laughter swirled around her. And then one drift brought her back into wakefulness, and she found herself not in the loud, brightly lit den, twisted into some awkward sleeping position on a chair or sofa or pile of pillows, but curled up on a soft mattress in a moonlit bedroom, Remy's arms around her and his warm breath in her hair.
He knew when she woke up; he was such a light sleeper it was ridiculous. The moment her breath quickened, part wakefulness and part drat, he did it again, Ah shouldn't be in here, not with Peter asleep on the other side of the room, he stirred a little, tightening this embrace and smiling, his expression smug, without troubling to open his eyes.
And sometimes he whispered something unhelpful in the dark, something like Where d'you t'ink you goin'? or Not so fast, chère or just Stay, and bent his head down to where his skin could brush hers, knowing perfectly well that his sleepiness would make her sleepy, and that his desire to keep her there was stronger than her desire to save herself embarrassment by sneaking back to her own bed. She'd never managed to make herself sneak away, not until well after dawn, when she opened her eyes and Piotr was already up and gone.
It was this pattern that made Rogue reach out before she was fully awake, her hand wandering vaguely to find the warm breathing solidity of him. When she found nothing, she reached farther, and ended up almost tipping herself out of the huge, soft bed where she'd been buried under a down comforter thicker than any she'd ever seen.
Warren's guest bedroom. No Remy.
Unbidden, a fast, flickering montage of terrifying images rose in her mind—a kiss that burned, Magneto's steady gray eyes meeting Remy's red ones, bullets and sleet beating her skin, mutant versus mutant, vomit and blood. She lay frozen, cold and irrational panic washing over her in waves, pinning her down. It was just a panic attack, the told herself, it wasn't real . . . just her body and mind reacting to the stress they'd been under . . . but she couldn't fight it off, couldn't move, until the icy rush of terror ran its course.
When at length the episode was over, it left her exhausted and drained and shaky, nausea fighting at her throat and the feverish images fading with alarming speed from her mind. She pushed herself up until she was leaning against the headboard and fished blindly for the lamp on the side table. She flinched as the light blazed on, then blinked and looked around.
The room was empty. Of course it was; Kurt and Warren were asleep. But she'd half-expected . . . no, more than half . . . almost known something would be there. Because something so often was. It was one of Remy's favorite games: a photograph slipped onto her pillow . . . a note or scribbled drawing or code on a postcard from Alexandria arriving in the mail of a random, unimportant day . . . a trinket or gift tucked away in her backpack or her bathroom cabinet or under her plate at dinner. He loved leaving things where he knew they'd be found, then just stepping back and waiting, watching out of the corner of his eye for his gift or joke to be discovered. It was reverse-thieving—a way to practice his old skills and lavish attention on her without compromising his dignity.
Of course, with her in Warren's guest bedroom above midtown Manhattan and Remy orbiting the planet on Magneto's space station, there was no way he could have snuck something in here. But he'd made her think like that before, just for the sake of watching her jump when the seemingly impossible happened anyway.
And now she was waiting . . . holding her breath for a surprise that wasn't going to come.
This is pathetic. I've been away from him before. I lived in Japan for two months without him.
But this was different. Then, she'd just missed him—and even that had messed her up enough. Now she was surrounded by the crushing dread that something between them had broken, seriously, maybe permanently. And right now there was nothing she could do about it, no way to tell just how bad this situation really was or if there were any way to fix it. It was loneliness mixed with helplessness and panic that made this so much worse than the months he'd been gone in pursuit of his mark.
And superficial though it was, before Japan she hadn't known his touch . . . hadn't been addicted to the feel of his bare hands on her skin. The emptiness around her now was almost physically painful.
She pulled the comforter up to her chin, hiding her hands underneath it, and gripped fretfully at her platinum ring. That, at least, still existed. That was a promise from him she could hang onto.
A metal promise.
He can't join Magneto. He can't. He can't.
But what am Ah gonna do if he does?
She couldn't answer. All she could do was lie still in the dark, waiting for the stress to pass, slowly letting her exhaustion override her worry and knock her out again.
Remy heard footsteps above his head, shouting voices. He couldn't make out more than a few words. Don't panic, he ordered himself, knowing that the words were a death knell.
The crawlspace under the Professor's desk, the former root cellar, was barely large enough for the computer towers and monitors crammed into it. All of the screens were still dimly active, not yet dropped back into sleep mode. Each screen was divided into four pictures, each showing a feed from a different camera hidden somewhere in the house. One of the cameras had to be just above the door to the office; it showed a clear but jerky picture of four soldiers kneeling around the downed Kitty, unsure of what to do.
He had to know what they were saying. If she went solid, they'd move her, and if he didn't hear where, she was gone. He scanned the computer setup for speakers, but there weren't any. This wasn't a home theater. There was a headphone jack in the central CPU, but he didn't have any . . . no, wait . . .
He pulled open his coat and grabbed for the left-hand pocket of Rogue's jacket. Please be in there, come on . . . if she'd left it to charge last night, he was out of ideas . . . saint ciel, the jacket smelled like her . . .
One stroke of luck. The mp3 player she'd received for Christmas was safely tucked away there, the headphone cord wrapped around it. Remy whipped it loose, guided the plug into the jack, and fitted one of the earbuds into his ear, muffling the other inside a closed fist. He selected the office feed and nudged up the volume.
"It's gotta be a hologram. A decoy."
"It's not. Didn't you read your briefing? The one called Shadowcat can do this."
"How's she still awake? She can't be more than a hundred and ten pounds. One shot should have knocked her out as soon as she got hit."
"She's a mutant."
"How'd he even know to tranq her? How'd he even know she was here? He was supposed to be on patrol at the north end."
Good question. Gambit switched camera feeds, pulling up the audio for the camera positioned in the hall. The soldier who'd shot Kitty was lying on his back in a pile of rubble with two medics crouched over him. Gambit couldn't get a good look at his face, but he'd bet anything the man had some pretty severe burns. He hadn't been pulling punches when he'd thrown that card.
"We've gotta get him life-flighted. Call the chopper."
"Take it easy, soldier. Don't try to talk. We're getting you out of here."
No information from that quarter. Gambit switched back.
"Command says this one poses an extreme containment problem," announced one soldier, his radio still held up to his face. "They're ordering immediate transfer to Solitude 4."
"How are we supposed to transfer it when we can't even touch it?"
Solitude 4, Remy mouthed, imprinting the words in his brain. His fingers were tingling with charge, and he had to breathe deep to keep from blowing something up.
"Wait . . . her eyes are closed." One of the soldiers took a knee, hanging his weapon on his shoulder. He tentatively reached out one hand and poked at Kitty's collarbone. His hand made contact. "She's solid. Alert the transport. We gotta get her moved before she wakes up."
Remy could feel his fingers digging into his palms, and had to work very hard to tune out the litany of curses playing through his mind. They were going to take Kitty, and there was nothing he could do to stop them. His teammate, Rogue's roommate, the little sister he'd never had, was being strapped onto a stretcher and carried away, and there was nothing he could do about it.
Colossus was going to kill him. But hopefully not before he could kill the soldiers walking around over his head.
Hold onto your hats, Solitude 4. The big bad mutants are coming.
Jean woke up shivering. Of course she had her uniform, which handled temperature change very well, and the super-tech lightweight blanket wrapped around her, and the fire she was huddled against (dying down now; that was probably why she'd woken up) . . . but there was no getting around the fact that the middle of the night in March in inland Canada was just going to be flat-out cold.
She had to get up and put some more wood on the fire, but she didn't want to. Cold as she was, it was going to be colder once she moved.
And of course, there was Logan, barely visible beyond the flames, sleeping sitting up against a tree. She'd never known him to just lie down on the ground and go to sleep when he wasn't under a roof. On dozens of camping trips when she was twelve, thirteen, fourteen years old (Logan had called them 'wilderness survival training', but the big bag of marshmallows she and Scott had always smuggled along tended to take the intimidation factor out of it) he'd always slept like that, propped up on something, arms folded, chin on chest, seeming somehow to always be watching even from the depths of unconsciousness.
Dang. She hated growing up. If she'd still been a pre-adolescent on this trip, she'd have been perfectly within her rights to worm her way over to Logan, leaving her dignity but not her sleeping bag behind, and snuggle up next to his leg and go back to sleep. His leg was warm. She was cold. End of story. No complications.
And then she'd grown up, and everything had changed, and here she was shivering by herself. Drat it all.
She reluctantly wiggled out of the blanket, her breath misting in front of her face and her skin recoiling under the onslaught of cold air. They'd set up a decent stockpile of wood before the sun had gone down, and even in the dim silver light she could spot it. She grabbed the first two big logs that came under her hands and tossed them onto the low fire. New, young, yellow flames started to lick out from underneath them, brightening up their campsite almost at once. She snuggled back into the warm but flimsy tech-blanket, wiggled closer to the fire, and closed her eyes with grim determination. She was going to get back to sleep if it killed her.
"Your hair's gonna catch," Logan's voice informed her.
"Good," Jean muttered, but she hiked the blanket up over her head and tucked it in around her face.
The blanket captured the heat quickly, and within minutes, even though her back was still pretty cold, her face, stomach, and arms were just this side of scorched, which felt wonderful. She pulled back a little, raising up her head to squint futilely through the light. She knew he was awake out there. "You okay? Are your toes going to fall off?"
She heard him chuckle. "Nah. I'm good."
"Okay."
"Can't sleep?"
"I'm sure I'll get there eventually." She laid her head back down and hugged herself a little tighter. "I'm just thinking."
"Plenty of time to do that tomorrow. I think we've still got a long way to walk."
"It's hard to just say you're going to think about something 'tomorrow'." She sighed and rolled onto her back, to look up at the sky and to toast her shoulder a little bit. "Logan, when did everything get weird?"
It was a vague enough question, but he knew what she meant. He was silent for a moment, seemingly debating whether or not answering would be a good idea. At length, he responded, "Biloxi."
She turned her head towards the sound of his voice. "Really? Biloxi? In the hospital?"
"Why does it matter?"
"It . . . doesn't, I guess. I just . . . I don't know. I hadn't thought about it. I guess I kind of figured it would have been . . . maybe prom night, or something. Some time when I'd at least washed my hair." She stopped and thought about it a little more, then amended, "I guess prom night would have been weird. I was seventeen. And I think you were AWOL that week because you didn't want to be around all the drama. So it would have been both weird and inconvenient."
That got an actual laugh. "Go to sleep, Red."
"Where have you been?" Hank demanded as soon as Gambit crested the hill and came into view. "We've been waiting for you for over an hour; we thought something must have happened to . . . where's Kitty?"
Gambit craned his head back to keep himself from leaning forward onto his knees. Four miles over uneven, uphill ground with all the legions of hell on his heels (or, at least, that's what it felt like) had taken a lot out of him, and his lungs didn't seem to be able to supply the oxygen for which his brain was screaming. The two coats, which had been such a good idea only a couple of hours ago, were trapping all his body heat. He could feel it rushing up through his collar onto his face and neck, and yet his throat burned with cold.
"Where's Kitty?" Hank demanded again. "Gambit, where is she?"
"Dey took her," Gambit gasped. "I couldn't . . . do nothin' . . ."
"You left her behind?" Ray demanded; it seemed he was flying co-pilot on the pickup mission.
"We gonna get her back. Don' worry. She ain't hurt—"
"You left Kitty? You never leave a teammate!"
"I know dat, genius, I tried—"
"Where is she?" Hank asked.
"Dey took her in a chopper. South. Talked about headin' for someplace called 'Solitude 4'."
"When?"
"Maybe four hours. Long gone. But Cerebro—"
"Oh, you mean the pile of screws and circuit boards that Forge is puttering over?"
"Not ready yet?"
"Not even a little bit. But they took her alive, right?"
Gambit nodded, not sparing the time or breath to explain that if they hadn't, he'd have sent the whole Institute up in a fireball of epic proportions before he'd have left her body in enemy hands.
"Then get in the plane. We'll get her back. Catch your breath. You look like roadkill."
"Thanks," Gambit sighed, wishing the sigh didn't sound as much like a gasp as it did. He couldn't run in cold air. It burned. And Kitty was far away, drugged and alone in a place called Solitude 4, having who-knew-what done to her, because he'd done a last-minute rewrite to the plan instead of staying with her, where he should have been.
It should have been him. Why hadn't it been him? He'd been scrambling all over the house—anyone could have taken him out at any time—how had they found Kitty first?
There was nothing he could do about it from here. He needed a phone and a computer and telepaths and firepower—needed Avalon.
We'll get her back. Before tomorrow sunrise. We will. Or so help me there will be hell to pay.
Kitty dragged herself from strange, drugged, vivid dreams. Gambit . . . the USB drive . . . Scott through the wall . . . black sky and white stars, shaking and steel . . . Gambit, she was supposed to be on this mission with Gambit, where was he? If anything had happened to him, Rogue was going to kill her . . .
Her eyes levered open. Her jaw had been hanging slack, and as she'd been lying on her side, there was a trail of saliva down her cheek. Gross. She was seeing triple, and the three pictures refused to stay put relative to one another. Either there was a loud treble speaker that wasn't quite plugged in right somewhere right next to her head, or her ears were ringing something fierce. And . . . oh, yes. She was going to puke.
She rolled onto her stomach, managing through will rather than muscle coordination to push herself off the floor. That gave her something like three inches of clearance between her face and the small puddle of what her stomach decided to force out of her mouth. When she rolled herself away from it, the three pictures were making smaller circles. If she held still . . . which she did for a few minutes, lying on her back and gasping while her mouth burned . . . they almost came into focus as one unified image.
It was dim, but not dark, around her. Warm enough, and no breeze, so she had to be inside. She was lying on hard, flat floor, and could hear her breath echoing off walls that were close around her. And in the ceiling directly above her was a round something, a big disc.
When her head settled enough to allow her to turn it, she took stock of her immediate surroundings. She was lying on a raised platform, round like the disc above her, maybe seven feet across, walled in by plexiglass. She felt like a deposit slip in one of those tubes at the drive-through bank, the kind that came back with candy in them if the teller was in a good mood. The cylinder was in the middle of a big, bare, industrial room. One wall of it was windows, through which she could see a control room full of computers. Two men were inside, leaning back in chairs, not paying more than passing attention to her.
She took stock. All limbs and digits present and working. She took a deep breath and held it, feeling herself drop into a strong, steady phase. Good. Good, good. As long as she could phase, she wasn't in that much trouble. Unless she was in an airplane, but it didn't feel like she was. Or deep underground . . . that was possible . . . but one problem at a time. Step one was standing up.
She curled her chin into her chest and pulled herself up, carefully and slowly, staying phased out. She was going to walk out of here, and the two guards could just watch her do it.
Standing up made the ringing get a lot louder. The floor wobbled underfoot, and black smudginess invaded her peripheral vision. Well, she could clear her head later, after she got out of here. She teetered forward to step through the plexiglass and off the round platform.
The second her foot met the barrier, a goshawful jolt shot up her leg through her whole body. It felt something like running on a foot full of pins and needles and something like jumping into a cold swimming pool and something like her phase gone horribly, horribly wrong. It shocked her, and it hurt. So much so that she fell down and puked again, coughing up the little bit of acid her stomach had managed to generate in the past couple of minutes. This time, she didn't get up.
A voice crackled through the ringing in her ears, amplified by speakers—a male voice. Raising her head, she matched the words to the movements of the mouth of one of her guards. "Yes, sir. It has regained consciousness. No, containment appears to be holding. We'll update you if the situation changes."
Containment. They had some kind of energy field around her. The jerks had planned for this.
Think, think, think. She couldn't think. She was too hurt and too scared to think.
If there was an energy field, there had to be a generator, and it would be electronic, which meant she could take it out. Probably under the platform. She took a deep breath, phased out again, and pressed her hand down through the floor.
Another shock. She blacked out.
It didn't take her very long to come around, because when she did the disembodied voice as reporting to its superiors that she was "testing the defenses." Like she was a velociraptor in Jurassic Park.
I want my team. I want to go home.
Just for the sake of being thorough, she tried kicking the side of the tube. But after two shocks, a blackout and a drug hangover, she wasn't strong enough to kick her way through even a regular pane of glass, and she knew it. Her heel bounced off.
"Hey," she called to the men behind the window. "You better let me out of here! When my friends find out where I am, they're gonna roast you. I want a lawyer, and a phone call. Who's in charge out there? Hey! Look at me when I'm yelling at you, jerkwad!"
"Yes, sir," said the voice. "Gassing now."
"Excuse you," Kitty rebutted, but her heart stuttered with panic. Phasing would keep her safe from darts and pills and just about any other drug delivery system you could name, but she still had to breathe. So no matter what she did, she'd have to inhale the thick gray gas that was now pouring from vents in the ceiling above her.
She held her breath anyway.
Please don't do this to me . . . please don't hurt me, I just want to go home, let me go home, please . . .
Panic used up oxygen too fast. She was out of air. Kitty Pryde opened her mouth and gasped, drawing in a lungful of cloying gray fumes.
Shadowcat of the X-Men could not get out.
Author's Notes:
Saint ciel: Holy heaven.