Don't Look Down

Don't Look Down

Don't Look Down

“Range?”
“Thirty meters.”
Rogue did have a tracking device with her, but she trusted the Wolverine’s heightened senses before any manmade equipment. Besides, the entire complex was buzzing with electrical activity and it was hard enough to sort out one energy source from another.
This was the third facility they’d examined in as many days. Xavier’s mind had managed a reverse probe of Jason Stryker’s before the floodgates had burst at Alkali and they were following up on every lead they had for the other bases where Stryker had conducted mutant experiments.
Looks like they’d finally got a break with this last one. It had been abandoned only a few days ago.
The corridor was painted mental hospital white. Not the pure, lush shade of a gardenia or a soft, snowy winter hue. No, it was that flat, dull, clean look with undertones of blue and green, perhaps even a bit of taupe. Didn’t hold a stain, soothing on the eyes…made her extremely uncomfortable.
Cyclops and Iceman were currently hacking into the computer system, so that put Storm inside the Blackbird downloading the communication log and Rogue and the Wolverine on recon detail.
They stood in front of the sliding doors, contemplating the keypad.
With an imperceptible flex of forearm muscles, the Wolverine released his claws.
Rogue stopped him with a soft, latex-gloved hand against his wrist. She punched in a nine-digit code, applied her fingers to the handprint identification pad and the light above the archway went from red to green. A hiss of air and the metal doors slid open.
“How did you–?”
She smiled, held up her hand and displayed the minute ridges and whorls on the tips of the glove she was wearing. “Stolen identity courtesy of Colonel Stryker.”
They stepped into the room and Rogue programmed the door to remain open.
“Rogue, Wolverine, come in please.”
“We’re here, Cyclops,” Rogue answered.
“Iceman and I are almost done with the mainframe. Where are you right now?”
“Just outside the cryo lab,” she responded. “Permission to enter?”
“Hold on,” came Storm’s smooth alto voice over the channel. “Wait for Cyclops and Iceman to get there, okay?”
“Acknowledged,” she replied, and slid the device back into her belt.
“What do you think is behind door number three?” the Wolverine asked her as they faced each other in front of the airlock.
“More dead bodies,” Rogue said tonelessly, looking away.
That’s all they had found in the last two labs.
Omaha and Langley had been deserted except for the decomposing corpses of mutants littering the floor.
The smell was horrible, the sight wasn’t much better.
The worst thing was the extensive documentation of the experiments that Iceman and Rogue had managed to recover from the partially sanitized database. There were so many of them – children who had been born with obvious mutations, taken from their parents and kept in the labs since birth. What Professor Xavier had found while examining the remains of bodies sickened them all.
A little boy with gills behind his ears and a fin growing from his spinal cord had been submerged underwater for weeks to see how his alternate airway functioned. Twins born with vertical pupils, retractable fingernails and elongated canine teeth had been subjected to lacerations and made to lick their own wounds to determine if their saliva had the same disinfectant/healing properties as that of a cat. A little girl whose body parts regenerated had her fingers, toes, ears and even her nose cut off to see how quickly they grew back.
The Wolverine had gone berserk in Langley and shredded the entire computer system when Storm found out that the fleeing scientists tried to hide the evidence of the existence of their test subjects with acid and fire.
The Wolverine’s fists clenched and relaxed as he watched Rogue unconsciously rub the inside of her left forearm. Lensherr was coming out to play, and he didn’t like it.
“Auschwitz?” he asked.
She shook her head. “Dachau.”
The Wolverine nodded and then cocked his head midway through the movement.
“What do you hear?”
“Breathing.”
Cyclops arrived a moment later, Iceman in tow.
“What’s the hold-up?” Cyclops asked.
The Wolverine gestured towards the door. “Survivor.”
Iceman checked his hand-held diagnostic device. “Just one?”
“Female. Mutant.” The Wolverine sniffed the air again. “Scared.”
Cyclops nodded.
“Blow it?” he suggested, indicating the airlock.
“No. We’re lucky that Stryker kept these simple.” Rogue turned to the second keypad and typed in a three-digit code. The door slid open.
Iceman was the first enter, Cyclops close behind him.
Rogue’s initial impression was that it was a storage facility. There were four matching white cylinders arranged in a row facing the door. Monitoring equipment was hooked up to each one of them and the computer system seemed to be still functioning.
A thin blonde woman was crouching next to one of the cylinders. She wore a white lab coat with the name “Sheppard” embroidered in scarlet on the left breast pocket. Her feet and legs were bare.
“He sent you to eliminate us, didn’t he?” she asked, turning weary eyes to them.
Iceman approached her gently. “We’re here to rescue you. We’re the good guys.”
She cringed as he reached for her, but at the touch of his hand she visibly relaxed and the tension drained from her body.
“How long have you been here?” Cyclops asked her.
“Over a year,” she replied softly.
She closed her eyes and rolled away from them. The collar of the lab coat slipped down enough to reveal the circular scar tissue at the base of her skull, right where her pale hair began.
Rogue breathed deeply to control her reaction. “Stryker used the neurotoxin on you as well?”
“All my life,” the woman whispered.
“What’s your name?” Cyclops asked.
“Sara,” she answered after a moment’s contemplation. “Sara Bannister.”
“How did you manage to stay alive?” Iceman asked her, checking her vitals.
“I don’t know. I thought I was already dead when I woke up.” She rubbed her wrists and pulled the coat more tightly about her. “Please, can we get him out of that thing? His air is going to run out in less than an hour.”
Rogue had Iceman move her out of harm’s way as the rest of them gathered around the cylinder.
“Who’s in there?” Cyclops asked.
“James. He’s sixteen,” Sara answered.
“How did you get out?” Rogue asked.
“I don’t know. I woke up alone on the floor yesterday with a broken-off hypodermic in my elbow and no memory of how I got out.” She winced again as Iceman disinfected her arm and began bandaging it.
One of the computers was still functioning and Rogue sat down at the console to see if she could access any of the files. Within seconds, she’d called up the operating instructions.
“They’re for human stasis. New prototype invented by Sheppard Aeronautical for space travel,” Rogue informed them, her hands switching back and forth between keyboard and mouse.
Cyclops gestured to his visor. “Blast? Melt?”
“Negative. If you miss, you’ll cook him,” Rogue cautioned. “We need to get him out of there without dramatically altering his body temperature. He’s sure to go into shock as it is when he’s extracted, so the less stress on his system, the better.”
“How about the good old-fashioned way?” The Wolverine released the claws on his right hand with a sudden “snikt”.
Sara let out a strangled scream and pushed herself up against the wall.
Iceman glared at the Wolverine. “A little discretion, please.”
“I think the Wolverine’s suggestion is best,” Rogue said after an awkward pause. “From the readouts, the only thing this unit is doing is exchanging oxygen for carbon dioxide, and it’s failing.”
Cyclops nodded curtly.
The Wolverine applied his three claws to the matte metal casing, very carefully slicing through six layers of tempered steel and electrical wiring to create a hole at the base of the cylinder. He retracted them, then stepped back quickly as a slippery, gel-like liquid began oozing out of the opening.
“Stasis fluid,” Rogue called from her position at the computer. “Isotonic. Non-toxic.”
Together, Cyclops and Wolverine struggled to get a grip on the boy as they eased him headfirst out of the shell and onto the floor. He emerged shivering and covered in pale, viscous slime. Wires connecting him to the cylinder were tangled around his arms, legs, torso, and even his throat.
“Get something to cover him, he’s freezing!” the Wolverine barked as he cleared the boy’s air passages and sliced through the tangle of wires with a lightning swift flick of his right hand’s index claw. Cyclops found a stack of towels and lab coats and he and the Wolverine dried off the boy and dressed him as best they could.
“It’s okay, James,” Sara called out to the boy as he struggled to get away. “They’re not going to hurt us.”
He nodded, teeth chattering. “How long this time?”
“Three months,” Sara said. She then turned to Cyclops. “There’s a shower behind that door.”
Cyclops took the hint and he led the boy to the room to get him cleaned up. When they emerged fifteen minutes later, Rogue was still attempting to hack into the system. The Wolverine was sitting next to her, looking on in amazement as her hands danced over the keys.
Sara had crawled as far away from them as she could get and was huddled in a corner, pulling the lab coat around herself and watching the Wolverine with wary eyes. Iceman was helping her to drink one of the protein-electrolyte mixtures that Cyclops made them carry on missions.
“Rogue, what can you tell us about the computer system?” Iceman asked as he helped Sara to her feet.
“The operating system has been partially deleted. The data is there, but it’s inaccessible.” She swore softly in French under her breath. “There are gaps in the files. Enough to make some sense, but I think it’s been encoded. We’ll need a password to get anything out of it.”
“No you don’t.”
They all turned to see James staggering towards her, held up by Cyclops.
The boy was pale from his long time away from the sun and his skin was stretched tightly over his body, as if he’d had an unforeseen growth spurt in the cylinder. Between the water and a handy bar of soap, Cyclops had managed to get him pretty clean and remove most of the wires. He had put him in the only clothing they could find – another white lab coat; this one had “Hay” embroidered in red on the breast pocket.
Cyclops tried to reason with him. “Listen, you’re in no shape to—”
James ignored him as he addressed Rogue. “May I have your seat?”
Rogue got up and he sank heavily into the chair. Sara walked over to stand behind him.
“Are you sure you’re up to this?” she asked quietly.
“Just need a little boost,” he replied, pushing his wet hair back from his face.
Sara nodded and placed her hands on his shoulders. He closed his eyes and splayed his hands on the keyboard, palms down. She closed her eyes as he connected with the machine.
The X-Men watched as the screen displayed the prompt, and then as if he triggered something hidden under the keys, it surged to life with a hushed whirr and began interfacing with him.
Sara visibly weakened and her breathing became audible. The veins on her throat pulsed like sentient indigo ribbons as did the ones on James’ neck and face, but he now looked as if he’d only spent three days in the stasis tube instead of three months.
“Hold on,” James muttered under his breath, as if he sensed Sara’s fatigue. “Almost there.”
His hands glowed red-gold around the edges and the muscles in his fingers twitched as the energy patterns shot through his nervous system and into his brain. The images on the screen had coalesced into a silent chaos of color and light as alpha and numeric characters raced from top to bottom and schematics appeared and disappeared faster than they could identify them.
“What’s he doing?” Iceman whispered to Rogue.
“I don’t know,” she replied, “but I’d love to find out.”
The Wolverine watched Rogue as she watched James. He saw her latex-covered hands curl into fists, then relax and come to rest against her thighs. He didn’t lay claim to any sort of psychic ability, but he knew her well enough to know what she was thinking: just get the boy back to the Mansion, and she might finally get some answers as to the nature of her own mutation.
With one last expulsion of energy, James cut the connection and pitched forward onto the console. Cyclops barely managed to catch him before he slid off the chair on to the floor. Iceman picked up Sara in his arms and lifted her up high against his chest.
“We have to get out of here,” she said, exhausted, but still lucid. “James activated the auto-destruct.”
“How much time do we have?” the Wolverine asked as he and Cyclops supported an unconscious James between them.
“Ten minutes.”
“We’ll need two minutes to prep the Blackbird.” Rogue gathered up a specimen of the stasis fluid and slipped the vial into her med kit. Then she hailed Storm on the comlink. “Storm, this is Rogue. We have two survivors and need to haul ass in less than ten.”
Storm’s smooth, accentless voice came over the channel. “Blackbird ready for liftoff. I’ll prepare sickbay. Storm out.”
“Let’s go.”
It took them less than five minutes to vacate the facility. Rogue led them, effortlessly navigating the maze of unmarked corridors and opening the endless number of pressurized doors with a few taps of her fingers on the adjacent keypads. Iceman was next with Sara in his arms. She was barely awake and visibly trying to relax as she watched the Wolverine and Cyclops bring up the rear with James between them.
They were in the air in another two minutes, Cyclops and Storm in the cockpit, Rogue buckled in behind them and the Wolverine in one of the jumpseats towards the back. James lay strapped into one of the Murphy beds that lined the sickbay niche. Sara lay in the other bed above him. Iceman was monitoring their vitals.
Only now did the Wolverine finally allowed himself to come out of battle-mode and let Logan take over. Time to check out how everyone else was doing.
They were all safe and breathing.
Good.
He studied each of them in turn, until it came to rest on the newest of the X-Men, Rogue and Iceman.
Bobby Drake, or “Iceman” as he was encouraging people to call him, was talking to Rogue about whether she wanted to catch dinner before or after the baseball game the kids were playing tonight. Logan could tell by the stiffening of her shoulders that she’d much prefer to be left to analyze her data in silence. Obviously, Boy Wonder wasn’t much in the way of taking a hint.
“Bobby,” he heard her gently remind him when the kid paused to take a breath, “We’re probably going to be in the lab all night debriefing with the Professor.”
“Okay.” He shrugged, then turned his attention to the status of their passengers.
Not much bothered Bobby Drake because he didn’t let it.
It was a good quality in an X-Man. His promotion to the team, originally scheduled for October, had merely been accelerated that cold gray dawn after Alkali. He was One-Eye’s protégé in so many ways: brains a-plenty, a fair amount of brawn, and the desire to fight for The Cause. Bobby also had a fair helping of Scooter’s nice-guy traits like confidence, charm, chivalry, extroversion.
Now Marie, well she had a different set of gifts and skills.
She lived a life all her own in her mind. Math, music, painting, literature, all of these came easily to her. She understood the symbolic nature of numbers, notes, shapes, and letters. It made her invaluable as an analyst, a position on the team that had been vacant after Jeannie…when Dr. Grey…when Jean died.
The girl was a loner by nature, too. He knew from snatches of conversation he’d caught while he’d been wandering around the mansion that everyday group situations were, for her, uncomfortable at best. Brushing and flossing her teeth in the morning with the others while wearing gloves was not fun. Going to the mall was a combination of frustration and longing. Parties were a nightmare. He could only imagine what it was like with her and Bobby.
What had the kid said?
It's just, that it's not easy-when you want to be closer to someone but...you can't.
For a moment, Logan almost took pity on the kid. Almost.
Then he reminded himself that the pretty-boy punk was the prime contender for finding a way around Rogue’s unnatural defenses. Granted, she was the human equivalent of Rappacini’s daughter, but with a body like that, he didn’t wonder that she turned heads wherever she went.
Jesus, he didn’t want to think about any of those testosterone-demented horndogs sniffing around her, especially that little Scott Summers-wannabe who was being groomed to take over the team.
The thought of Bobby losing control over his mutation and harming her in any way made the Wolverine want to slice, dice, and julienne his scrawny little ass.
Hell, the sound of her voice when she spoke Bobby’s name was enough to make him more than a little pissy. But he took satisfaction in the fact that Frosty didn’t call her anything but “Rogue”.
It was understandable that she would insist on it while she was submerged in her part of Rogue, X-Man. She didn’t drop her extremely formal style of communication or her brisk, professional tone of voice until after she’d shed the black leather catsuit. It was the signal she used to mark the transition between the two identities that she shared with her teammates.
Only when she was once again clothed in her street wear, complete with dramatic red lips and long black gloves, did she become Rogue who joked and laughed with her friends. Only then would she revert to her adult default setting: the soft-spoken Southern lady who taught art, piano and French to the children. Only then could she be the tough-as-nails fighter who delighted in regularly wiping the Danger Room floor with Jubes and Kitty.
But wasn’t it interesting that all of them, from their little songbird Theresa Rourke to their newest recruit, that blue-skinned Deutschmann, Wagner, to His Baldness, Professor Chuck, called her “Rogue”?
None of them had ever called her by her birth name. He doubted she would have answered to it if they tried.
The use of her given name was his, and his alone. It was a privilege he didn’t take lightly.
He looked out of the window to his left. The sky was a soft shade of orange and the clouds were few and wispy. They would be at the mansion in less than thirty minutes and on to their little post-mission rituals.
Bobby would soak in the hot tub for a while and make for a big bowl of ice cream. Ro would go for an hour of yoga and one of those macrobiotic meals she swore by. As for Summers, well Logan didn’t know what the man would do, but he’d seen him walking after the last two ops in the herb garden Jean had planted last spring. Guess it was just his way of coming home to her.
Home.
Now that was a subjective term if ever there was one.
Home was where he stayed long enough to take off his boots and belt buckle. When it came time for him to unwind, a Cuban and a Molson were his gear. Had been for as long back as he could remember.
And Rogue? He predicted she would catch a shower and try Kitty’s latest post-op culinary concoction before she headed to the music room for some quality time with her other best friend, the enormous Bösendorfer Imperial that he’d found her playing that night he came back after Alkali.
He lay back and closed his eyes, sending his body into REM sleep. He might have incredible regenerative powers, but that didn’t negate his need to dream. He’d once tried staying up as long as he could, but after 96 hours he had begun to hallucinate. It’s not as if he was going to be useful until they landed and someone had to carry the refugees out of the plane.
Besides, he’d rather not admit that he had a fear of flying.