Chapter 9
Deadman's Hand
Laura glared at the gambler out of the corner of her eye, the missing flesh around her mouth making it look as though she were grinning at him. Gambit fanned the deck of cards in his hand and started sprinting down the hall in the opposite direction, but not before throwing his lucky Ace of Diamonds to make sure she took the bait.
She took off after him, abandoning the dismembered and disemboweled vampire lying in a puddle of her own blood. Gambit rounded a corner, suddenly regretting the extra pounds he'd put on since Gabby and Meg and her mother arrived at The Institute and he started cooking them breakfast every morning.
"Rogue, Chère," he called on his transceiver. "Your husband is a very brave but also very stupid man, and he loves you very much. If you don't save his derrière in the next minute, I'm afraid he will be having a funeral with a closed casket. Hello? Can anybody hear me?"
Gambit cursed in a mix of Cajun French and English, and tossed another handful of explosive cards in hopes of slowing Laura down. He didn't necessarily want to blow her legs off, but it was admittedly better than his wife playing fifty-two pickup with whatever was left of his body.
She either dived or leaped out of the way in time of every explosion, her reflexes even sharper than usual, and she was quickly gaining on him. When she was nearly within disemboweling distance however, he played his final hand and retrieved his collapsible bo staff from within his long brown jacket.
The Queen of Clubs being the vindictive bitch that she was, finally caught Laura in an explosion, but although a few limbs dangled limply, she remained upright and mostly intact, already healing and even further enraged.
His metal staff crackled with kinetic energy, and another explosion went off directly in her face when he parried Laura's lethal strike. He backed away, pleased that the Damascus steel strengthened by his mutant powers was able to at least fend off adamantium, but Laura quickly recovered and was already working to get inside his guard.
Laura tried repeatedly but Gambit used his greater range to jab at her claws and send her flying with even more potent explosions. She landed a short distance away, and after reattaching her right arm, bent her claws back into place and waited for the bones to heal back around them.
Although he was more than a little disturbed by the grizzly and almost unrecognizable sight before him, Gambit couldn't help grinning, remembering the years he spent sparring with Logan, as well as their many, many drunken fights that very nearly took one of their lives. He was also more than a little pleased with himself that he could still go toe-to-toe with the younger generation of mutants, and one of the most deadly at that.
He was near the top of the leaderboard of the X-Men's infamous danger room, with the high score having previously belonged to Logan before being tied and eventually surpassed by Laura, who raised the score twice more since. She might not have been as powerful as her father, but she was faster and possessed one of the most analytical minds Gambit had ever seen. While Logan was best described as a three hundred pound berserker, Laura was a cold blooded assassin who thought her way through fights rather than cutting through them. When she wasn't under the influence of trigger scent, that is.
"I reckon you're still in there fighting," he said. "Not sure I'd be alive otherwise. I can kill you, and you know that, but the real Laura knows I never would. If you attack me again head on, it either means you're stupid, or your subconscious is leaking through."
She growled at him, her glowing red eyes filled with hate, but not without the callous cunning that Laura Kinney was known for.
He nodded, taking it as a sign, and suddenly grinned ear to ear. "You know, Petite, you normally don't look or act anything like your father, but I'm starting to see the resemblance. You're even starting to smell like him."
Laura rushed forward and Gambit readied his staff, but before the gambler could find out whether he was right or not, the ceiling came down on top of them, and Laura suddenly found herself dodging debris as a tall woman with white streaks in her red hair suddenly appeared, and kicked Laura hard in the shoulder, sending her flying down the hall.
"Well if it isn't the love of my life," Gambit said, grinning wide and dusting himself off until he saw blood trickling from her mouth and bullet holes in her jacket. "You alright, Chère?"
She nodded, not taking her eyes off Laura who had already recovered and was watching her closely. "Kurt was right, my powers had no effect on Kimura, but Colossus and I were still able to send her running like a scolded dog with its tail between its legs. We were chasing her when I got your call. Kurt's gonna try getting a tracking device on her helicopter. Are Jubilee and Gabby alright?"
"Well, I wouldn't say they're 'alright' necessarily, but they're alive. Barely. Hopefully we'll be able to say the same."
Rogue removed her gloves just as Laura popped her shoulder back into socket. "Sugar, I really don't wanna do this. Believe me, this is gonna hurt me almost as much as it's gonna hurt you, but I don't want you hurting nobody."
Laura took a cautious step forward, and Rogue took it to mean that perhaps the part of her that remembered the kind of threat she represented might also remember their friendship as well, but perhaps she merely smelled Kimura's scent on her. "Logan was like a father to a lot of us X-Gals," she said. "I owe the man everything, including my life, but I owe you nearly as much, Laura..."
Although she remained silent about her work, dozens of mutant-kind's worst enemies had mysteriously 'disappeared' since Laura's time with X-Force and after. She had hunted down mutant traffickers, brought Weapon X and its allies and competitors alike to their knees, and was everybody's go-to when they needed less-than-legal jobs done without any questions asked or evidence left behind.
Everyone owed Laura a favor for getting her hands dirty on their behalf, or at least a debt of gratitude for her contributions to preserving mutant-kind from the shadows, and Rogue was no different. In fact, she might very well have owed Laura the most, and there was no way of thanking her father now that he was dead.
"Careful, Chère," Gambit whispered, watching Laura's posture. "You sure you can touch her without getting cut to pieces?"
"You got any better ideas?"
"Well, no, but-"
"Not only will it siphon her rage and give her one hell of a migraine, but it should also help bring out the real Laura. Unless you wanna try blowing off more of her limbs, we're running out of options."
Laura made the decision for them by leaping for their throats. Rogue immediately took to the air and tried getting behind her while Gambit struck with his bo staff. Laura however easily parried it and avoided the subsequent explosion, but in trying to keep Rogue off her back, she neglected to notice the Queen of Hearts in her hand.
The explosion sent Laura sailing into the wall, but Rogue fought through the discomfort and grabbed Laura's forearms. The very moment their bare skin came into contact, it was as though they'd both been electrocuted. Rogue screamed at the top of her lungs while Laura bit her tongue and let out a high-pitched whimper.
Rogue's grip eventually faltered and Laura flailed wildly, slashing her in the stomach and left shoulder before stumbling a few steps and convulsing on the ground.
"Chère! You alright?" Gambit grabbed his wife and quickly dragged her a safe distance away, already retrieving gauze from his jacket before being shoved away.
"My designation is X-23," Rogue growled, her eyes glowing red, "and I am to follow the orders of my masters." She flinched, and in a softer, almost childlike voice began repeating to herself- "My name is Laura Kinney. Don't scream. My name is Laura Kinney. Don't scream..."
Gambit held the sides of her face, completely immune to her parasitic powers. "No, your name is Rogue, and you are my wife and the future mother of our children." She continued repeating Laura's name and her designation, and he grabbed her hands when she threw a half-hearted punch at him. "Anna Marie, snap out of it!"
Her eyes flickered back to normal and she glared at him. "Don't call me Anna Marie!"
Gambit smiled. "Whatever you say, Chère. Just as long as you don't start calling yourself Laura or X-23, 'cause that ain't the woman I married."
"I didn't scream!" The pair turned and saw Laura staggering toward them, claws raised. "I didn't scream! I didn't scream!"
"Petite, no!" Gambit raised his bo staff but could already see it too late, and threw himself on top of his wife.
Fireworks exploded around them, clouding their vision with smoke while Laura roared in frustration and anger. When the smoke cleared, the staff was sheared in two but Laura was doubled over with second and third burns all over her body. Across the hall, Jubilee raised her pink sunglasses and blew away the smoke emanating from her fingertips.
"HAPPY CHINESE NEW YEAR, LAURA!"
Laura spun, her full attention returning to the vampire whose scent had completely changed in the few minutes since she left her lying in a puddle of her own viscera. She still smelled like an apex predator, albeit hidden underneath an alluring scent used to lure unsuspecting victims to their lustful desires and deaths, but where she had previously smelled like cold death, now she was the embodiment of life.
"Excuse me," she said, "but I think it's my turn to be on top."
Laura pounced and Jubilee floated through the air back down the hall, occasionally shooting fireworks over Laura's head for her own amusement.
Gambit and Rogue blinked, uncertain what they had just witnessed, but Rogue groaned as she moved, grasping both her stomach and shoulder to keep from bleeding out. "It's not deep," she said. "I got lucky, and I can already feel Laura's healing factor at work."
"Of course you're lucky. You married me, didn't you?"
"Only thanks to Laura." She forced a smile but quickly grimaced again and held her aching head which hurt far more than any internal injuries she might've had. "Laura's still in there," she murmured, "and she's fighting with everything she's got, but she hasn't slept in days and I don't know how much more her mind can take. What's left of it anyway..."
Gambit's eyes narrowed. "What do you mean?"
"Kimura wants us dead, but more than anything, she wants to break Laura's mind and leave only X-23 behind. Laura's been right from the very beginning. This is all just one big game to her."
He nodded and stood up to follow but Rogue grabbed his arm, looking gray and nauseous. "Remy, I saw what Kimura did to Laura. Some of it anyway. Kurt's right. Hell's too good a place for her..."
Gone were the precise strikes of the world's greatest assassin. Instead, Laura was flailing wildly, and she had either slowed considerably, or Jubilee had recently gotten much faster, or perhaps both. All she had to do was step out of the way or angle her body to keep Laura's claws from touching her.
"I don't wanna hurt you, Laura," Jubilee said. "I don't even wanna chew on your neck. Alright, maybe that's a lie. I could totally go for some Type E poured over rocky road ice cream right about now, but I told Gabs it'd have to wait until tomorrow. Do you know why she has trust issues all of a sudden?"
Jubilee grimaced as she'd gotten cocky again and Laura drew a pair of red lines across her thigh. "Not gonna lie, Dude, but you really messed up me and Gabs back there," she said casually. "Not cool. I mean, you know shit's bad when the Jewish girl looks at you and screams 'Jesus Christ!'"
She laughed and turned into mist before she could be disemboweled again, and reappeared behind her. "Come on, that was funny. Kitty laughed, kinda. If this is about wishing you a happy Chinese New Year, listen, I know you, Gabs, and Meg are like one-eighth Korean or whatever, but it's a really big deal to me and I was really upset we couldn't spend it together like we'd planned. How's your Cantonese coming along by the way?"
Laura roared in fury as she was unable to touch the vampire, who kept turning into mist or floating just out of reach.
"Sorry if I'm being even chattier than usual. Been hanging out with Kitty and Gabby too much I guess, but it also feels really, really good to have a heartbeat again. That's kinda why I don't want you stabbing me anymore. I worked really hard for this blood, and I wanna enjoy it for as long as I can."
Hearing heavy boots coming to a stop behind her, Jubilee grinned wide and held her hand behind her back. "Hey, dealer?" she called. "I think Laura's one card away from going bust. Hit me!"
Behind her, Gambit threw the Ace of Spades which she deftly caught, and shaping her hand like a gun, fired a massive explosion straight through Laura's chest.
Jubilee stumbled backward, feeling the color draining from her skin and her heartbeat slowing, and frowned at Laura standing perfectly still, a gaping hole where her heart used to be, staring through herself as if in a trance.
Gambit caught up with her, careful not to come between the vampire and her prey. "Rogue says Laura's fighting the trigger scent and her programming," he gasped. "Considering I'm still alive, I think she's probably right."
Jubilee nodded, licking her lips and admiring her handiwork. "Yeah, she never tried decapitating either me or Gabby, and she had plenty of opportunities to kill us both."
"Rogue also says we need to find a way to end this quickly, or else there might not be anything left of her mind."
"You mean she'll end up like me?" The two glanced up as Gabby and Kitty walked out of the wall, the former of whom now sporting a bullet proof vest a few sizes too large, as well as some body armor and new weapons attached to her utility belt.
"Sorry we're late," Kitty said. "We were looking for clothes and accidently stumbled across the armory. Gabs was feeling nostalgic about her old Weapon X uniform, so we stole anything and everything that wasn't nailed down."
"Anybody wanna commit some war crimes with my new Makarov?" she asked.
Laura immediately turned to Gabby, glaring at her and baring her teeth. She stumbled forward, nearly collapsing while Rogue landed beside Gambit, a tourniquet around her left shoulder and gauze taped to her injuries.
"Kurt's got the tracking device on Kimura's ship," she said. '"He and Colossus are gonna escort the prisoners to The Blackbird. Storm and Cyclops have everything under control outside, but we're gonna wanna get out of here as soon as possible before the Russian government finds out we're here or the facility self-destructs."
They nodded but kept their attention fully on Laura dragging her feet over to Gabby.
"Laura," she said. "It's me. Gabby. Do you-"
She lunged forward and drove her claws through the wall where she'd been standing, and Kitty and Gabby disappeared and reappeared closer to Jubilee, with Kitty keeping a tight grip on Gabby. "Yeah, I'd say you probably remember..."
"Listen, I don't know if I can phase us both through adamantium," Kitty whispered. "It takes a lot out of me, and I'm already running on fumes."
Gabby nodded. "Don't worry. Laura can't hurt me, and neither can anybody else for that matter." She walked out of the wall in front of the others, hands up to show she wasn't a threat. "Laura. Your name is Laura, and my name's Gabby. I'm not just your clone. I'm your little sister. You said so yourself. Do you remember?"
Laura winced and stumbled into the nearest wall which she stabbed repeatedly. "I didn't scream! I didn't scream! I DIDN'T SCREAM!"
"Of course you didn't," Gabby said, keeping a safe distance from her claws. "We know you didn't. You're the strongest person I've ever met."
"My designation is X-23! Kimura is my master! I am her dog!"
"No, your name is Laura Kinney, and you're nobody's bitch. Remember who you are, Laura. You're my sister. The only one I've got left, a-and I love you more than anything."
"That's an order, X," Jubilee said firmly, hoping it'd trigger her programming. "Remember who you are!"
Laura turned to the vampire, her head cocked to the side. "M-my name is Laura Kinney," she repeated. "...My name is Laura Kinney. Don't scream. My name is Laura Kinney. D-don't scream..."
"That's right, Laura. You're safe now. Everything's gonna be alright." Gabby reached for her hand but quickly withdrew when Laura tried dismembering her again.
"I didn't scream," she whispered, looking at each of them as though it were imperative they understand. "I-I didn't..."
Without warning she raised a single claw to her neck and began cutting.
"Laura, no!" Gabby shouted. "Somebody stop her!"
"X-23, STOP!" Jubilee ordered.
Laura froze, her neck hanging by a thread and her entire body shuddering. She searched among the faces rushing toward her for anyone familiar, and retracted her claws. Gabby took another step forward, now in stabbing range, and Laura met her gaze. "I didn't scream," she said, before pressing her fists against the sides of her head, and extending her claws straight through her skull.
She dropped to her knees, blood pouring from her head, a blank expression on her face. She stared at Gabby as if trying to place a name with the familiar face, muttering something none of them could understand before finally and mercifully collapsing onto the floor.
Time stood still as did everyone else, staring in disbelief before finally someone spoke. "Is everyone alright?" Rogue asked, turning to each of them. They slowly nodded, all except for Gabby, who knelt down beside her sister, brushing her hair out of her face. "Laura..."
Jubilee laid a hand on her shoulder. "It's over, Gabs. She'll be alright now."
Gabby looked up, tears rolling down her cheeks. "She tried to kill herself," she sniffled. "Laura tried to kill herself."
She sobbed over her sister, and Jubilee wrapped her arms around her, with Kitty joining the embrace a moment later. "She didn't know what she was doing, Gabs. She-"
Kitty fell silent, deciding it didn't really matter, and that given Laura's history, she very well might've known exactly what she was doing.
Gambit removed his coat and laid it atop Laura, and giving an apologetic look to the girls, attempted to gently remove her claws from her head but Jubilee grabbed his arm. "Don't," she warned. "Even if she's coming down from trigger scent, she's not in her right mind. I know technically being dead isn't good for her, but if she wakes right now, her first instinct will be to kill everyone who poses a threat, and then run away as far as possible."
Kitty half-laughed, half-sobbed, and squeezed Gabby tightly. "She'd always wake up in a panic whenever my alarm would go off or my phone rang for school. She probably went through at least three sets of sheets every week."
He nodded, and after covering Laura's face, gently scooped her up into his arms. "Oof. No offense, Petite, but you're heavier than you look."
Gabby looked up, fresh tears in her eyes. "Kimura put more adamantium in her body," she whimpered. "She broke her, and then she put her back together again. Just like she said she would..."
The others frowned, staring at the lump in Gambit's arms. "Any chance we could go after Kimura tonight?" Kitty asked.
Rogue shook her head, still holding her stomach and shoulder. "None of us are in any shape to fight Kimura right now. Some of us are barely on their feet as it is." They were all lucky to be alive, owing their survival to their years of training as much as Laura fighting her programming.
Gabby sniffled and got to her feet with the help of Kitty and Jubilee. Seeing Rogue's bloodstained clothes and pale skin however, she reached out and grabbed her hand. They both reacted as if they'd been shocked, and Rogue quickly stepped away and put her gloves back on.
"Ow," Gabby said, shaking her hand. "You know, I think that might've actually kinda hurt. Can I do it again?"
She reached for her cheek this time but Rogue grabbed her wrist. "Thanks for letting me borrow your healing factor, Sugar, but let's not start any bad habits, shall we?"
Jubilee grabbed Gabby to make sure she was steady, probably unaware just how much of her lifeforce had been drained from a simple touch that hadn't even lasted a full second.
"Come on, Petite, "Gambit said, looking down at the lifeless bundle in his arms. "Let's get you and your sister home..."
For the first time since saying goodbye to her sister, Laura awoke not to the indescribable agony of having her arms and legs removed, but rather a heavyset man walking on tile floor. Rather than dangling from the ceiling by chains, she was instead strapped to a hospital bed, or perhaps simply entangled in a mess of bedsheets.
Her nineteen years of memories were a jumbled mess with nothing making sense. From her first memories of crawling on the floor of the facility to Kimura kissing her goodnight the evening prior, everything was out of order. The only thing she knew for sure was that the room she was lying in smelled like a sterilized laboratory, and that this might be her only chance to escape.
She extended her claws and cut herself free from whatever restraints might've been holding her and the machines she was attached to, and heard someone shouting the name 'Laura'. Although startled by his scent which reeked of predator, she barely gave the intelligent-looking man covered in blue fur a second glance. She recognized him from somewhere, somewhere long ago or perhaps very recent, but he wore a white lab coat, which meant he had hurt her before and was going to hurt her again.
'He's going to tell Kimura you've been bad,' she thought to herself, cutting through the nearest door. 'Why do you keep disappointing the people that love you?'
The second voice belonged to Kimura, which was the closest thing X-23 had to a conscience. There was no one she was more afraid of, not even Dr. Ramirez, but not even Dr. Kinney told X that she loved her.
Dr. Kinney hurt her and made her cry because it was her job. Kimura hurt her not because she wanted to or because it was her job, but because X-23 never gave her any choice. Or so she told her anyway.
Tears streamed down her cheeks as she did her best just to remain on her feet, feeling more exhausted than she ever had in her entire life. Maybe if she ran straight to Kimura and apologized it wouldn't be so bad? She had tried hiding before and it had only made her punishment worse. Much worse...
'Your name is Laura Kinney,' a voice said in the back of her mind. A few jumbled memories came together. X thought she might've loved Dr. Kinney, and had laid next to her body like a dog protecting its owner after killing her. She had died smiling at her, and gave her the name 'Laura'. The meaning had meant precious little to her at the time. People had names. She was Kimura's weapon, and she was designated X-23.
'My NAME is Laura Kinney!' the voice repeated, chanting to her over and over while sprinting through an endless maze of identical-looking hallways, which judging by the stale air was somewhere deep underground. The walls were even more bare than the facility's, but the reflective surfaces irritated her. She remembered being fascinated by her reflection when she was little, but at some point she'd started breaking mirrors and defacing any reflective surfaces in her cell. She wasn't sure why, only that she hated the creature looking back at her, and thought they deserved to be punished.
She instinctively clawed at her wrists and forearms, suddenly angry with herself for reasons she couldn't fully understand before turning on her reflections. They weren't wearing pink hospital gowns which was unusual, but instead a baggy gray shirt and sweatpants, similar to what she sometimes saw the staff wear when they weren't on duty and came back from the gym.
X-23 tried calling for Kimura's help but the words wouldn't come, only a garbled mess of words even she didn't understand.
The scientist with blue fur called her name again and Laura instinctively retracted her claws. 'Hank,' she thought to herself, remembering countless hours spent in his office which doubled as The Institute's library, discussing but mostly listening to him talk about books, as well as philosophy and theology, and going to his office whenever she wanted to be alone but have company at the same time.
She knew however what would happen to her if she even accidently threatened a man in a white coat, and took off running even more desperate to escape than before.
The Beast was fast, but she was faster, and all around her alarms and sirens blared. She was used to hearing these and hadn't thought much about them at the time, but now it suddenly seemed strange she hadn't been knocked unconscious with gas yet, or that the adamantium proof blast doors hadn't come down, or the guards hadn't already subdued her. Was it yet another test? Were the memories real or had they been implanted again?
She suddenly rounded a corner when a familiar scent piqued her curiosity and brought another flood of memories back into alignment. A teenage girl with a face and scent almost exactly like her own, and having both a designation and a name.
X-23-G. Gabrielle Kinney. Gabby...
The single most important person in the entire world.
'They'll hurt her!' Laura screamed internally. 'Can't let them hurt Gabby!'
The girl turned a corner at the same time, an almost perfect copy of herself except younger and having facial scars, and Laura grabbed her by the shoulders. She tried to speak but all that came out was another intelligible mess of words.
"It's alright, Laura," Gabby said, keeping her from running away again. "Calm down. We're at The Institute. Er, underneath it anyway. You're safe. We're safe. Nobody's gonna hurt you, and nobody can hurt me." Tears suddenly came to her eyes. "Not physically anyway."
Behind her, a crowd of people had gathered that Laura recognized but couldn't remember if they were from the facility or not. A young woman standing in front was wearing a yellow coat and smelled like death, but despite all of X-23's instincts telling her to either run away or kill the monster masquerading as a human, she instead suddenly found herself at ease. Half a dozen others stood cautiously behind her, but like the monster, Laura had only a passing sense of deja vu.
A young woman with a blond pixie cut stepped forward, as did a dark haired woman that Laura briefly mistook for Dr. Kinney, the woman who read her bedtime stories every night and gave X-23 her name.
"LAURA!" The two ran toward them but Gabby motioned for them to stay back until Laura collapsed into her arms and onto the floor, sobbing.
"My name is Laura Kinney," she whimpered. "I-I didn't scream..."
"It's alright, Laura," Gabby said, Meg and her mother joining the embrace. "It's gonna be alright..."
(A/N: Thank you for reading and I hope you enjoyed. It was important to me for Laura to ultimately be the one who snapped herself out of the trigger scent's influence. Obviously the damage done by Kitty, Jubilee, Gabby, and Gambit played a part, as well as Rogue draining a large portion of her lifeforce, but I wanted Laura fighting her programming to ultimately be what saved the day. "My name is Laura Kinney" and "Don't scream" is what got her through the hell Kimura put her through, and it's what kept her from killing her sister and friends. Simple but effective, and it's how I imagine Laura's mind operated before leaving the facility. She was programmed to obey commands, and Laura giving herself commands to obey, or at least thinking in very simple sentences just seems to fit her personality in my opinion, but it also shows how much her mind had deteriorated the past week.
In my original outline, Laura versus Gambit and Rogue was going to be more of an actual fight, but that was before fleshing out her encounter with Kitty Pryde, and after the bloodbath between her and Jubilee, I felt anything else would be a step down. Also, while Gambit and Rogue can certainly hold their own, they can't exactly take a whole lot of punishment compared to the others. I did enjoy writing more for Rogue however as she's one of my all-time favorite superheroes, and her siphoning Laura of her trigger scent rage was actually one of the inspirations for this story.
Thank you again for all the love and support, friends. "Killers By Trade" has quickly become one of my all-time favorite stories to have written, and it's strange to think it's barely two months old at the time of posting this chapter, and it's already nearly the length of a novel. I'm a longtime fan of Laura and the X-Men, but it wasn't until I started working on this story that I really grew to appreciate their characters and stories. I hope I've done them justice in your eyes, and I'll hopefully have the "final" chapter posted in the next couple weeks. I do have a multi-chapter "epilogue" planned which follows Laura taking her revenge on Kimura and tying up loose ends, and was originally planned to be a separate story, but it works much better as a continuation of "Killers By Trade" in my opinion. Regardless, thank you again, and I hope you enjoy the upcoming "finale".
All credit goes to my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, who has blessed me with this story and all of you. God bless)
