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ax_mainTeam One goes in for Alex, and manages to get out mostly intact. Physically, anyway.
Scott still was not sold on his roster. Whatever Wanda had said about them being some of the Brotherhood's best fighters, they weren't his fighters. And they were Brotherhood, no less.
But Cyclops would work with what he had. They couldn't waste time. "Eileen, what do you see?" He asked.
"A few dozen flatscans," the blond reported from her position in the air, studying the facility intently. "One mutant. Electronic security for days, not that it'll be much of a holdup. There's some regular, patterns of movement that suggest guard patrols and some random wandering." She shrugged. "We've taken on bigger."
Granted, that had been with the Brotherhood, not a couple of X-Force kids. But whatever. Eileen could deal. Especially if it meant taking out another Right lab and freeing the captive mutant inside.
Cyclops grabbed a stick and sketched out a rough layout of the complex. It was wheel and spoke in design, a central command with wings coming off the center. It would let fewer guards watch more halls, and meant they couldn't exactly avoid that central area. "Where's the mutant," he asked tersely, ignoring for now the slur. He didn't have time just now to argue with the Brotherhood.
"Alex is over there," she reported, pointing to a portion of the facility practically on the opposite end of the access doors they had been watching. "I don't think there's any way to get there without going through that central security station. Maybe if we make enough noise over here, though, a couple of us could sneak through? I dunno. Sneaking isn't really my thing."
"Or mine," Pyro added, in case being dressed in red didn't make that painfully obvious as it was. "Just give me some shit to burn. I make awesome distractions." The sooner the better, too. Alex was in there, and they had to get him out, stats. No being too late this time. No way.
Billy regarded the layout, all but expressionless. "I can move quietly if I have to," he said. "But I think sneaking is going to be a long shot. And once things start getting loud out here, they'll probably assume it has to do with a rescue anyway and rally guards around Alex. We're going to wind up having to punch through them either way."
Cyclops made some quick calculations. "Phantazia, if you can shut down electronic security, Pyro and I will go in and do what we need to do. I want you and Billy out here, in case we need to do some clean up." He looked over at Billy meaningfully. "Proportionate force response."
"'If I can shut down electronic security'," Eileen echoed, scoffing. "What is this, my first day? I'll black out the whole place for you--except emergency lighting, naturally. You just worry about getting Alex out. I can give them plenty of other shit to worry about, believe me."
"Can we get this show on the road?" Pyro cut in. Of course Eileen could do it. They weren't fresh-faced X-kids, thanks very much. Why the fuck they were stranded with this guy instead of working as part of their usual team, Pyro didn't know, but the sooner they broke Alex out of there, the better.
This wouldn't be a repeat of last time.
Billy's calm broke. He glared at Scott, angered at both the check and at being manuvered into imposing a mandate he most certainly didn't agree with. These sons of bitches had laid hands on Goody, tried to kidnap and torture him all over again. And Scott wanted him to be careful with them?
He responded to the order with a stiff nod, hand falling to the hilt of the knife Pam had lent him. "Go get Alex."
If Cyclops noticed the expression on Billy's face, he didn't react to it. Instead, he turned to Eileen, and nodded once, short. "Do it."
"A 'please' would be nice every now and then," Eileen grumbled. Then, under her breath, "Bossy prick." Still, she rose a little higher in the air and raised her arms, the violet light sputtering from behind her mask intensifying as she concentrated on the facility. There was an aborted wail, like a klaxon had been about to sound but shorted out, and suddenly the lights of the Right lab disappeared. A moment later, and the golden glow that had previously spilled from the few, barred windows was replaced with intermittent flashes of red.
"There you go," she said, satisfied. "The last thing their security would have showed 'em was a breach in the northeast wing--that should pull at least some the guards out of your quickest route to Alex. Assuming they were paying attention and don't just freak the hell out, I mean."
Pyro didn't wait for Scott's say-so and was already moving towards the nearest door. With the electronic locks out of the picture, it was simply a matter of pulling it open, and he slipped inside the building, expecting Scott to be on his six. He'd have felt better with Eileen going in with them, but 'a few dozen flatscans' should be easy enough to handle.
The red emergency lighting made the place look like the set for any kind of post-apocalyptic movie. Something with zombies, maybe, or a virus containment issue. Both. Pyro flicked his wrist and two fireballs illuminated the hallway, going to hit the two guards who had been raising their weapons towards them. They slammed into the wall and slumped to the floor, and Pyro reluctantly let the fire die down.
Cyclops took off, hot on Pyro's heels. He needed to stick close, both to keep the other mutant safe and to try and prevent any imminent wide-scale death-by-burning. So far, so good. The guards' response was chaos - Eileen's shut-down of their systems combined with the sudden ringing of alarms and invasion had left them unsure of whether they were coming or going - and that made it easier to take them down (non-permanently) one by one. Triggering his visor, he hit a guard who had had the misfortune of running towards them. "Keep track of everything you see." He instructed. Once Alex (and anyone else being held hostage here) was clear, Cyclops had every intention of mining every bit of information he could about this hell hole.
"Sir yes sir," Pyro muttered under his breath. He was going to keep track of every way he managed to burn up the fuckers - non-lethally, apparently. Because people who kidnapped your brother - again - didn't deserve very painful deaths. Whatever. He could still enjoy dropping every one of them. They'd have burn scars, if nothing else. He moved like a man on a mission (which, appropriate), heading straight towards the hub. "What's your plan for getting past that?"
He figured it would be the place with the most security, or what would be the point. Pyro's own plan would have been to burn a path through, of course. He figured Cyclops here might like something a little less potentially deadly for the bastards, though.
Cyclops narrowed his eyes on the area up ahead, taking in men, weaponry, angles and trajectories. They weren't the worst odds he'd ever seen, but they weren't the best either. Some of those weapons were new, and that merited some concern.
Several of them were still in the command center, which kept them easy enough to deal with. If they kept them tied up and out of the fight, they would only have to worry with the ones already in the hall to start. "I think the command center could stand to be surrounded by a ring of fire," he observed.
"Sure," Pyro replied, and clicked on his device to create a small flame he twirled between his fingers. "Then what?" He hoped Wanda was proud of him for asking for the plan first, instead of rushing in like an idiot. He would have already if he didn't have to show fucking restraint. Killing everybody was the most efficient plan, okay? But no, here he was, behaving. For now, anyway.
"Then one of us incapacitates them while the other takes out the stragglers," it was the most efficient, non-lethal division of their labor. "Keep an eye on their weapons; they've got some I don't recognize."
The panic should help them in avoiding being hit (so few people performed at their best when shocked) and the close quarters of those in the trapped group should limit how well they could use their skills. Still, Cyclops was wary.
"We were fucking shot at," Pyro reminded him. "I'd keep an eye on them even if we did."
But that was enough talking. Talking was bullshit, in general, but especially while they had Alex. He clicked his device on and fire ran down the hallway, suddenly surrounding and licking at the walls of the command center with a speed and voracity no natural fire would have shown. "Game on!"
Surprised, and even panicked, shouting began as Pyro's flaming lasso encircled the command center. It cut the host of guards there off from reinforcement, delaying them enough that the number was 70% less likely to become overwhelming for two attackers. And if the 30% off-chance occurred, well, desperate times and all that.
Cyclops sprinted down the hall towards the fiery kill-zone Pyro had created. Hand up at his visor, the slightest flash of movement - raising a weapon - led to a guard out cold on the floor. Fucker would feel that in the morning, that was for sure.
Pyro was hot on Cyclops's heels, his shorter legs making for a bit less speed. There was all the fire in the world for him to play with now, and when some of the people inside the command center opened the door to try and get out, flames rushed in and over the guards inside. No lethal actions did not mean no scarring, at least, and those fuckers would definitely need some skin grafts after today. There, he'd 'incapacitated' everyone in there, just as he'd been asked (he did kill the flames burning at them before they would grow lethal, look at him being a good boy).
"Go get Alex!" he shouted over at Cyclops. "I'll hold the fort here!"
Well, Pyro had left them alive at least (barring complications) so Cyclops chose not to belabor the point. "Shout if you need back-up!" He said. He knocked a two assholes out of his way and began trucking in the direction Eileen had indicated.
"It's what we have comms for," Pyro muttered to himself, and threw a fireball in the direction of arriving guards.
***
Hanging back was one of the last things Billy wanted to do. But he held himself in check. Waited until the first guards emerged around the corner of the facility, feeling out the security of the perimeter. Billy didn't say anything. Didn't move. None of the guards here would know him anyway. Silver blades flicked through the air, slicing through armor, into flesh. Achilles heel. Hamstrings. Wrists. Fingers.
No running away. No firing weapons. Crippled. Screaming. Bleeding. But no deaths. As ordered.
"Not bad," Eileen admitted, nodding at the groaning, uniformed men now lying in a pile of tattered clothing and blood. By her own standards, that was practically gushing praise. "But watch this."
The next guard to emerge, only seconds later, looked more like he was making a break for it than attempting to bring the facility back under control. Eileen flicked one wrist, the long purple coat she wore on missions whipping around her ankles where she hung suspended in the air, and the man simply dropped, eyes rolling back in his head. "He'll have the mother of all hangovers when he wakes up from that," she noted, sounding satisfied. "But it should be non-terminal enough to keep General Summers happy."
Billy narrowed his eyes and sent a knife into the limp body, slicing through the Achilles tendon. "Making sure they don't walk away from this will make me happy."
"I like you, kid," Eileen decided, knocking out the pile of bodies Billy had made earlier just to put a stop to all that annoying moaning. "You knock 'em down, I'll knock 'em out. You know, synergy. We might as well play to our strengths." She tilted her face to one side, adding, "Heads up. Feels like there's another group coming our way. Can't tell if they're running or defending, but I guess that doesn't really matter."
It really didn't. No one here was innocent. When the cluster of five cleared the doorway, Billy closed to meet them, knives in hand, wading into them with a flurry of thrown blades and precise slashes. He'd put on height and muscle since coming to the school. He'd been reintroduced to the fighting discipline that had been so long neglected during his confinement and examination by The Right. He was more deadly now than when he'd left, and was more than willing to let these inhuman bastards reap the full benefit.
He barely heard the high-pitched whine of the sonic canon powering up as the last man standing staggered away from him, one useless leg dragging. A second later, a wall of force knocked Billy flying.
"Shit!" Eileen yelped, as Billy was propelled backward through the air. She reflexively manipulated the repulsion fields around him in an effort to mitigate the inevitable crash that was coming, but there was only so much she could do. Making a cutting motion in the air, she shorted out the asshole's noise-gun, then sent him into the land of unconscious goons along with his friends.
"Hey, kid," she called over to where Billy had landed. "You still alive?"
Even with a safety net, Billy hit the ground hard, too dazed by the blast to try and break his fall. His armor took the brunt of it, but he staggered to his feet with his head swimming and the breath knocked out of him. Drawing air hurt, and he could feel blood oozing down the side of his face.
"Fine," he ground out between his teeth. "Just winded."
"If you say so." Eileen didn't sound convinced, but it wasn't like she'd never seen this kind of single-minded (potentially self-destructive) focus on a mission before. Hell, that was half her team, in a nutshell. Who was she to criticize? Wasn't like the guy had lost a limb, or anything. If he said he could still fight, then he could probably still fight.
"I hope you recover fast," she added, tilting her head, "'cause we got more incoming. On the plus side, they don't seem to be packing any weapons," though she hadn't really recognized that noise-gun as a weapon until she'd seen it used, so better to take that reassurance with a grain of salt. "Maybe researchers or support staff? We'll know in a minute."
Billy called another knife to-hand. It didn't matter what they were; they and people like them had kept these places running. Tortured him, Goodnight, Pam and all the others. Maybe he couldn't kill them, but he could make sure they knew what it was like to wear scars for life. There weren't any innocents here.
***
There was some kind of commotion in the halls outside Alex's familiar, spartan room. He hardly noticed; even the blackout had failed to register as anything significant. He'd blinked a few times while his eyes adjusted, but otherwise didn't stir. After they'd processed him, he'd planted himself in one corner, tucked his knees up under his chin, and waited. It was all he could do. They had him again. They had him, and he didn't know when, or if anyone would ever find him again. It was every dormant nightmare Alex had ever had brought sickeningly to life. And he was alone. Either they had separated Pam from him, she hadn't been taken ... or ...
He just couldn't think his way through all that. So he'd shut down. If the Right couldn't reach him, they couldn't hurt him--not in any way that mattered. They could do whatever they wanted to his body; Alex didn't care anymore.
Cyclops shot one guard's legs out from under him (and not off, which the guy should count as a win, considering, even if they were definitely broken now) and body slammed another into the wall as he rushed down the hallway. A lot of empty cells down here, which begged the question: were they never full, or were those kids more murders the Right deserved to answer for? Another blast, another shout. He'd have to commend Pyro on his work, this would have been far more difficult without his flaming obstacles. Only one door was locked, and Cyclops pounded on it. "Alex!!"
The pounding and the voice outside caused Alex to raise his head and glance at the door. He wasn't sure what all the fuss was about, since the guards and scientists would have just come inside. He also wasn't particularly curious about it, since there was no reason to be curious about anything when you were going to spend the rest of your life as a lab rat, running through impossible mazes with punishment and more punishment at the end of them. Scratching idly at his neck where the collar had begun to irritate his skin, he called back, "Yeah?"
His tone was flat, uninterested. Completely divorced from his current circumstances. Far, far away.
"It's Cyclops!" His brother shouted through the door. "Stand back. I'm going to blow the door in."
For safety purposes, he'd have preferred to do something with a bit more precision. But time was of the essence.
Alex tilted his head as the door to his cell blasted inward, colliding against the far wall with enough force to leave it embedded in the concrete. After considering that for a moment, his face turned toward his brother. "Hey," he acknowledged listlessly, shifting in his corner and pushing himself up to his feet. "What are you doing here? This isn't a place you should be."
"I'm here because this isn't a place you should be," Cyclops retorted. "Or anyone, for that matter."
He reached out a hand, to help Alex out of the cell. "Are you injured?"
Accepting the hand Scott offered with that same incurious, blank expression, Alex allowed himself to be directed out of the tiny room without resistance. "They've only had me long enough for preliminary testing," he reported, rattling off facts straightforwardly. "Nothing that would impede or distort anything more serious they might have planned for later. Just a few bruises and some puncturing here and there."
The flat affect was more and more worrying the longer it went on, and Cyclops made a mental note to shove his brother at some mental health professionals when they got back. Right now, though, there was no time to try and coax Alex out of it. They had to deal with the immediate emergency.
Cyclops clipped a guard running toward them, sending the man careening into a wall with enough force he did not immediately get back up. "Let's get you out of here, then.
"Did you see any other mutants here?" He asked as he began quickly directing Alex back towards where he'd left Pyro. They didn't want to leave anyone behind.
"Not this time," he said as Scott shepherded him into the hall. "I think I might have been the only one, this time ... But I wasn't paying that much attention. I coulda missed something, maybe."
"Okay." He made some rapid-fire calculations, involving Fatale's ability to actually follow orders and do as he asked, rather than sticking around to try and take some of the Right fuckers down then and there for their crimes. Since it was Alex in the balance, though, he decided the risk was minimized as it could be. "Fatale," he said into their comms, well aware she was listening. "Alex needs an evac."
"Coordinates?" Pam got to her feet awkwardly, glanced down at her palms which she'd pretty well shredded with her nails while trying to stay visible, and wiped them off on her pants. She'd deal with them later; it wasn't a priority right now. She looked up at Goody and explained, "They've got him. Gotta go."
Following Scott's lead back into the hall, Alex looked back at his brother, mildly curious. "I think we both need an evac, don't we? Is Fatale coming? I don't think I would like for her to see me like this." He paused. "I would like to leave, though."
Scott didn't blame Alex for not wanting Fatale to see him so...blank. Hurt. He knew from his own experience that far worse than experiencing the trauma yourself was watching someone you loved experience it second hand without being able to fix it for you. But Alex had to go back. He wasn't mission-ready and they weren't done, and Scott wanted a doctor to look at him.
"I think we'd both rather her see you like this than that she see you injured later," Scott pointed out. He read the coordinated on the comms to Fatale. He turned to Alex. "I'll see you on the other side."
Pam concentrated on the coordinates and opened a portal, then stepped through. And let out a sigh of relief as she saw Alex, who didn't look okay, per se, but who didn't look injured, either. Better than she'd let herself hope for, in any case, and the tightness in her chest eased, just a little. "C'mon, let's get out of here," she said, grabbing hold of his arm, then paused and looked at Scott. And frowned. "Where's everyone else?" she demanded. Because there'd been Eileen, and Billy, and Pyro. She wasn't about to leave all of them behind.
"Hi, Fatale," Alex said absently as she teleported in and took hold of his arm. When she started speaking, he looked in Scott's direction too, a furrow in his brow compromising the blank expression he'd worn up to that point ... even if it didn't seem quite entirely connected to their present circumstances. "We shouldn't go without the others. I wouldn't leave anybody here, while this place is still standing."
Cyclops looked at Fatale, "They're still here, and I'm staying, until we finish. But he needs to go back now; I'll call again once we're done and everyone is accounted for."
Pam eyed him levelly, then nodded. "I'll keep my comm on," she promised, then gave Alex's arm a tug. She recognized the dazed look - the sooner he got out of here, the better. "C'mon, let's go nuke some hot pockets for everyone," she urged. They could even actually do it, after Dr. Hank checked him out. It's give him something to not stare at for a while. Besides, he liked hot pockets.
"I like hot pockets," Alex noted. He gave Scott a look that had something like hesitation in it, but it passed quickly and he soon fell in beside Pam, waiting for the portal to open. If his brother said he was staying, then it didn't seem like it was worth arguing about, and being somewhere else sounded pretty good. Better than hot pockets, even.
As soon as they had teleported away, Cyclops began pounding on doors and listening for any noises inside; if there were any other prisoners here, he didn't want to miss them. "Pyro, status report." He said into the comms, casually punctuating it with firing the legs out from beneath a guard who had finally found his way to the action. Spotting an abandoned desk, he also grabbed a couple loose flash drives.
"Pretty fucking boring," Pyro reported, sounding exactly that bored. "Does it count as killing them if they die from smoke inhalati- shit!" There was the sound of a scuffle over the comms, and then, a few seconds later, Pyro's voice came back on, holding a very uncharacteristic hint of panic. "Shit, fuck! My fire's gone! They shot me with a thing and I can't - I can't control it anymore!"
***
"God fucking dammit," Eileen cursed under her breath as Pyro's voice chimed through the comms. Her glowing eyes darted toward Billy, dried blood caking one side of his face and carrying himself with that touch of gingerness that suggested he'd bruised or maybe even cracked a rib. She spared another glance for the pile of (still breathing!) bodies they'd made out of the staff and guards that had tried to escape. And even though she couldn't feel anything else headed their way just then, the bizarre weapons used by some the Right guards as they'd attempted to flee meant she couldn't be sure they didn't have some way to evade her electromagnetic sense.
"Fucking dammit," she repeated for good measure. "Cyclops, if you don't get Pyro out of there--and I mean fucking yesterday--I'm going in after him." It was a testament to how hard she was trying to follow Wanda's instructions that she remained outside with Billy; under most circumstances, she'd have stormed the place by then, orders be damned.
"On it." His voice was calm, even as he sprinted through the hall back to the command center. As he approached, there was a distinct smell of char, but no lingering heat. Whatever they had done to extinguish Pyro's flames had been complete. Cyclops slowed down, just a hair, as he approached, to give himself time to gauge the situation.
The entire area was filled with firefighting foam, and Pyro had been taking a few hits, trying as he was to fight, without fire or any sort of weapon, on the slippery floor. He'd just been brought down by a charged net, and he was convulsing on the floor, and in dire need of some help.
Rapid-fire calculations raced through Cyclops' head: the angle needed to toss the net off Pyro with his beam, the force, how to bounce it off the floor to achieve both those things, the safest place to aim so as not to dent Pyro. Within seconds, he'd triggered his visor, bouncing a beam off the floor to knock the net off of him.
Attention now on him, he began rapidly firing on their attackers, knocking them into walls, breaking weapon-holding hands, but given their number and Pyro's vulnerability he knew he'd be fighting an uphill battle. "You able to move?" He asked.
Pyro was having trouble remembering how to breathe, and each breath hurt like a bitch, but he eventually groaned something that resembled an affirmative answer, and slowly got to his feet, stumbling towards Cyclops.
Cyclops cleared his way of debris and attackers before meeting Pyro in the middle. Cyclops wrapped an arm around the other teen and began leading him out, hampered slightly by the tedious exercise of shooting the assholes in their way.
He was fast, faster than most, at noticing visual shifts - his eyesight guaranteed it - but with so much to take in, even his special eyesight didn't make him invulnerable. He caught the lift of a guard's arm a fraction of a second too late in the melee, and a bullet (luckily conventional) hit him hard in the stomach. No puncture - he'd have to tell the school this high tech shit worked - but it still hurt and, worse, pissed him off.
Cyclops fired an optic beam at the offending guard harder than was strictly necessary, sending him into a metal wall hard enough to make him scream.
Scott pretended not to notice.
Pyro fucking hated feeling so wobbly-kneed that he had to lean on Summers to move fast enough, but there he went anyway. Fucking electric net shits! When Cyclops got shot, he flicked his wrist and instinctively tried to throw fire at his attacker, but of course, he fucking couldn't. What if this was forever? What then? He couldn't be a fucking flatscan, he just couldn't.
At least this flatscan hit the wall painfully enough, and Pyro had to point out, through gritted teeth, "You're opening both of us up to injury by going soft on them."
Scott bit back his immediate response, which was something to the effect that his unsolicited advice was duly noted and would be ignored accordingly. In a mission was not the time to tell his own team to shove it. "I will get us out of here," was all he offered instead.
They were nearly to the door. One shot, two, rebounding off walls to get the few remaining guards out of their way. The sound of cracking bones and shouts of pain provided background noise, but it was easy enough to brush aside. They hadn't come to make friends and hadn't shot first. Another few feet and one last push took them outside.
Once targets had ceased pouring out of the facility, Billy had let himself shut down. No anger, no conversation. Alex was safe. He had part of what he'd come for, anyway. Now it was just waiting to be allowed to leave, to go back to Goodnight.
He glanced over Scott and Pyro, expression dead and blank. "Are we done here?" he asked, no inflection in his voice.
Eileen, for her part, glowered at the pile of unconscious bodies she and Billy had made out of those attempting to flee the facility. Sure, the comm-chatter suggested that Alex was safe, and that Pam had gotten him out of there, but ...
"What kind of shape is Summers in?" demanded the blond, the emergency lighting pooling from ransacked lab dipping and guttering dangerously as her temper rose. Maybe she wasn't allowed to kill anybody, but she could damn sure make them wish they were dead. And she would, if they'd gone and undone what progress they'd been able to make with Alex over the last several months since they'd rescued him the first time.
"Physically intact." Cyclops reported without inflection, whether or not he was concerned about his own brother's well-being would remain a mystery.
"Fatale," he called over the comma, "need an extraction."
Scott still was not sold on his roster. Whatever Wanda had said about them being some of the Brotherhood's best fighters, they weren't his fighters. And they were Brotherhood, no less.
But Cyclops would work with what he had. They couldn't waste time. "Eileen, what do you see?" He asked.
"A few dozen flatscans," the blond reported from her position in the air, studying the facility intently. "One mutant. Electronic security for days, not that it'll be much of a holdup. There's some regular, patterns of movement that suggest guard patrols and some random wandering." She shrugged. "We've taken on bigger."
Granted, that had been with the Brotherhood, not a couple of X-Force kids. But whatever. Eileen could deal. Especially if it meant taking out another Right lab and freeing the captive mutant inside.
Cyclops grabbed a stick and sketched out a rough layout of the complex. It was wheel and spoke in design, a central command with wings coming off the center. It would let fewer guards watch more halls, and meant they couldn't exactly avoid that central area. "Where's the mutant," he asked tersely, ignoring for now the slur. He didn't have time just now to argue with the Brotherhood.
"Alex is over there," she reported, pointing to a portion of the facility practically on the opposite end of the access doors they had been watching. "I don't think there's any way to get there without going through that central security station. Maybe if we make enough noise over here, though, a couple of us could sneak through? I dunno. Sneaking isn't really my thing."
"Or mine," Pyro added, in case being dressed in red didn't make that painfully obvious as it was. "Just give me some shit to burn. I make awesome distractions." The sooner the better, too. Alex was in there, and they had to get him out, stats. No being too late this time. No way.
Billy regarded the layout, all but expressionless. "I can move quietly if I have to," he said. "But I think sneaking is going to be a long shot. And once things start getting loud out here, they'll probably assume it has to do with a rescue anyway and rally guards around Alex. We're going to wind up having to punch through them either way."
Cyclops made some quick calculations. "Phantazia, if you can shut down electronic security, Pyro and I will go in and do what we need to do. I want you and Billy out here, in case we need to do some clean up." He looked over at Billy meaningfully. "Proportionate force response."
"'If I can shut down electronic security'," Eileen echoed, scoffing. "What is this, my first day? I'll black out the whole place for you--except emergency lighting, naturally. You just worry about getting Alex out. I can give them plenty of other shit to worry about, believe me."
"Can we get this show on the road?" Pyro cut in. Of course Eileen could do it. They weren't fresh-faced X-kids, thanks very much. Why the fuck they were stranded with this guy instead of working as part of their usual team, Pyro didn't know, but the sooner they broke Alex out of there, the better.
This wouldn't be a repeat of last time.
Billy's calm broke. He glared at Scott, angered at both the check and at being manuvered into imposing a mandate he most certainly didn't agree with. These sons of bitches had laid hands on Goody, tried to kidnap and torture him all over again. And Scott wanted him to be careful with them?
He responded to the order with a stiff nod, hand falling to the hilt of the knife Pam had lent him. "Go get Alex."
If Cyclops noticed the expression on Billy's face, he didn't react to it. Instead, he turned to Eileen, and nodded once, short. "Do it."
"A 'please' would be nice every now and then," Eileen grumbled. Then, under her breath, "Bossy prick." Still, she rose a little higher in the air and raised her arms, the violet light sputtering from behind her mask intensifying as she concentrated on the facility. There was an aborted wail, like a klaxon had been about to sound but shorted out, and suddenly the lights of the Right lab disappeared. A moment later, and the golden glow that had previously spilled from the few, barred windows was replaced with intermittent flashes of red.
"There you go," she said, satisfied. "The last thing their security would have showed 'em was a breach in the northeast wing--that should pull at least some the guards out of your quickest route to Alex. Assuming they were paying attention and don't just freak the hell out, I mean."
Pyro didn't wait for Scott's say-so and was already moving towards the nearest door. With the electronic locks out of the picture, it was simply a matter of pulling it open, and he slipped inside the building, expecting Scott to be on his six. He'd have felt better with Eileen going in with them, but 'a few dozen flatscans' should be easy enough to handle.
The red emergency lighting made the place look like the set for any kind of post-apocalyptic movie. Something with zombies, maybe, or a virus containment issue. Both. Pyro flicked his wrist and two fireballs illuminated the hallway, going to hit the two guards who had been raising their weapons towards them. They slammed into the wall and slumped to the floor, and Pyro reluctantly let the fire die down.
Cyclops took off, hot on Pyro's heels. He needed to stick close, both to keep the other mutant safe and to try and prevent any imminent wide-scale death-by-burning. So far, so good. The guards' response was chaos - Eileen's shut-down of their systems combined with the sudden ringing of alarms and invasion had left them unsure of whether they were coming or going - and that made it easier to take them down (non-permanently) one by one. Triggering his visor, he hit a guard who had had the misfortune of running towards them. "Keep track of everything you see." He instructed. Once Alex (and anyone else being held hostage here) was clear, Cyclops had every intention of mining every bit of information he could about this hell hole.
"Sir yes sir," Pyro muttered under his breath. He was going to keep track of every way he managed to burn up the fuckers - non-lethally, apparently. Because people who kidnapped your brother - again - didn't deserve very painful deaths. Whatever. He could still enjoy dropping every one of them. They'd have burn scars, if nothing else. He moved like a man on a mission (which, appropriate), heading straight towards the hub. "What's your plan for getting past that?"
He figured it would be the place with the most security, or what would be the point. Pyro's own plan would have been to burn a path through, of course. He figured Cyclops here might like something a little less potentially deadly for the bastards, though.
Cyclops narrowed his eyes on the area up ahead, taking in men, weaponry, angles and trajectories. They weren't the worst odds he'd ever seen, but they weren't the best either. Some of those weapons were new, and that merited some concern.
Several of them were still in the command center, which kept them easy enough to deal with. If they kept them tied up and out of the fight, they would only have to worry with the ones already in the hall to start. "I think the command center could stand to be surrounded by a ring of fire," he observed.
"Sure," Pyro replied, and clicked on his device to create a small flame he twirled between his fingers. "Then what?" He hoped Wanda was proud of him for asking for the plan first, instead of rushing in like an idiot. He would have already if he didn't have to show fucking restraint. Killing everybody was the most efficient plan, okay? But no, here he was, behaving. For now, anyway.
"Then one of us incapacitates them while the other takes out the stragglers," it was the most efficient, non-lethal division of their labor. "Keep an eye on their weapons; they've got some I don't recognize."
The panic should help them in avoiding being hit (so few people performed at their best when shocked) and the close quarters of those in the trapped group should limit how well they could use their skills. Still, Cyclops was wary.
"We were fucking shot at," Pyro reminded him. "I'd keep an eye on them even if we did."
But that was enough talking. Talking was bullshit, in general, but especially while they had Alex. He clicked his device on and fire ran down the hallway, suddenly surrounding and licking at the walls of the command center with a speed and voracity no natural fire would have shown. "Game on!"
Surprised, and even panicked, shouting began as Pyro's flaming lasso encircled the command center. It cut the host of guards there off from reinforcement, delaying them enough that the number was 70% less likely to become overwhelming for two attackers. And if the 30% off-chance occurred, well, desperate times and all that.
Cyclops sprinted down the hall towards the fiery kill-zone Pyro had created. Hand up at his visor, the slightest flash of movement - raising a weapon - led to a guard out cold on the floor. Fucker would feel that in the morning, that was for sure.
Pyro was hot on Cyclops's heels, his shorter legs making for a bit less speed. There was all the fire in the world for him to play with now, and when some of the people inside the command center opened the door to try and get out, flames rushed in and over the guards inside. No lethal actions did not mean no scarring, at least, and those fuckers would definitely need some skin grafts after today. There, he'd 'incapacitated' everyone in there, just as he'd been asked (he did kill the flames burning at them before they would grow lethal, look at him being a good boy).
"Go get Alex!" he shouted over at Cyclops. "I'll hold the fort here!"
Well, Pyro had left them alive at least (barring complications) so Cyclops chose not to belabor the point. "Shout if you need back-up!" He said. He knocked a two assholes out of his way and began trucking in the direction Eileen had indicated.
"It's what we have comms for," Pyro muttered to himself, and threw a fireball in the direction of arriving guards.
***
Hanging back was one of the last things Billy wanted to do. But he held himself in check. Waited until the first guards emerged around the corner of the facility, feeling out the security of the perimeter. Billy didn't say anything. Didn't move. None of the guards here would know him anyway. Silver blades flicked through the air, slicing through armor, into flesh. Achilles heel. Hamstrings. Wrists. Fingers.
No running away. No firing weapons. Crippled. Screaming. Bleeding. But no deaths. As ordered.
"Not bad," Eileen admitted, nodding at the groaning, uniformed men now lying in a pile of tattered clothing and blood. By her own standards, that was practically gushing praise. "But watch this."
The next guard to emerge, only seconds later, looked more like he was making a break for it than attempting to bring the facility back under control. Eileen flicked one wrist, the long purple coat she wore on missions whipping around her ankles where she hung suspended in the air, and the man simply dropped, eyes rolling back in his head. "He'll have the mother of all hangovers when he wakes up from that," she noted, sounding satisfied. "But it should be non-terminal enough to keep General Summers happy."
Billy narrowed his eyes and sent a knife into the limp body, slicing through the Achilles tendon. "Making sure they don't walk away from this will make me happy."
"I like you, kid," Eileen decided, knocking out the pile of bodies Billy had made earlier just to put a stop to all that annoying moaning. "You knock 'em down, I'll knock 'em out. You know, synergy. We might as well play to our strengths." She tilted her face to one side, adding, "Heads up. Feels like there's another group coming our way. Can't tell if they're running or defending, but I guess that doesn't really matter."
It really didn't. No one here was innocent. When the cluster of five cleared the doorway, Billy closed to meet them, knives in hand, wading into them with a flurry of thrown blades and precise slashes. He'd put on height and muscle since coming to the school. He'd been reintroduced to the fighting discipline that had been so long neglected during his confinement and examination by The Right. He was more deadly now than when he'd left, and was more than willing to let these inhuman bastards reap the full benefit.
He barely heard the high-pitched whine of the sonic canon powering up as the last man standing staggered away from him, one useless leg dragging. A second later, a wall of force knocked Billy flying.
"Shit!" Eileen yelped, as Billy was propelled backward through the air. She reflexively manipulated the repulsion fields around him in an effort to mitigate the inevitable crash that was coming, but there was only so much she could do. Making a cutting motion in the air, she shorted out the asshole's noise-gun, then sent him into the land of unconscious goons along with his friends.
"Hey, kid," she called over to where Billy had landed. "You still alive?"
Even with a safety net, Billy hit the ground hard, too dazed by the blast to try and break his fall. His armor took the brunt of it, but he staggered to his feet with his head swimming and the breath knocked out of him. Drawing air hurt, and he could feel blood oozing down the side of his face.
"Fine," he ground out between his teeth. "Just winded."
"If you say so." Eileen didn't sound convinced, but it wasn't like she'd never seen this kind of single-minded (potentially self-destructive) focus on a mission before. Hell, that was half her team, in a nutshell. Who was she to criticize? Wasn't like the guy had lost a limb, or anything. If he said he could still fight, then he could probably still fight.
"I hope you recover fast," she added, tilting her head, "'cause we got more incoming. On the plus side, they don't seem to be packing any weapons," though she hadn't really recognized that noise-gun as a weapon until she'd seen it used, so better to take that reassurance with a grain of salt. "Maybe researchers or support staff? We'll know in a minute."
Billy called another knife to-hand. It didn't matter what they were; they and people like them had kept these places running. Tortured him, Goodnight, Pam and all the others. Maybe he couldn't kill them, but he could make sure they knew what it was like to wear scars for life. There weren't any innocents here.
***
There was some kind of commotion in the halls outside Alex's familiar, spartan room. He hardly noticed; even the blackout had failed to register as anything significant. He'd blinked a few times while his eyes adjusted, but otherwise didn't stir. After they'd processed him, he'd planted himself in one corner, tucked his knees up under his chin, and waited. It was all he could do. They had him again. They had him, and he didn't know when, or if anyone would ever find him again. It was every dormant nightmare Alex had ever had brought sickeningly to life. And he was alone. Either they had separated Pam from him, she hadn't been taken ... or ...
He just couldn't think his way through all that. So he'd shut down. If the Right couldn't reach him, they couldn't hurt him--not in any way that mattered. They could do whatever they wanted to his body; Alex didn't care anymore.
Cyclops shot one guard's legs out from under him (and not off, which the guy should count as a win, considering, even if they were definitely broken now) and body slammed another into the wall as he rushed down the hallway. A lot of empty cells down here, which begged the question: were they never full, or were those kids more murders the Right deserved to answer for? Another blast, another shout. He'd have to commend Pyro on his work, this would have been far more difficult without his flaming obstacles. Only one door was locked, and Cyclops pounded on it. "Alex!!"
The pounding and the voice outside caused Alex to raise his head and glance at the door. He wasn't sure what all the fuss was about, since the guards and scientists would have just come inside. He also wasn't particularly curious about it, since there was no reason to be curious about anything when you were going to spend the rest of your life as a lab rat, running through impossible mazes with punishment and more punishment at the end of them. Scratching idly at his neck where the collar had begun to irritate his skin, he called back, "Yeah?"
His tone was flat, uninterested. Completely divorced from his current circumstances. Far, far away.
"It's Cyclops!" His brother shouted through the door. "Stand back. I'm going to blow the door in."
For safety purposes, he'd have preferred to do something with a bit more precision. But time was of the essence.
Alex tilted his head as the door to his cell blasted inward, colliding against the far wall with enough force to leave it embedded in the concrete. After considering that for a moment, his face turned toward his brother. "Hey," he acknowledged listlessly, shifting in his corner and pushing himself up to his feet. "What are you doing here? This isn't a place you should be."
"I'm here because this isn't a place you should be," Cyclops retorted. "Or anyone, for that matter."
He reached out a hand, to help Alex out of the cell. "Are you injured?"
Accepting the hand Scott offered with that same incurious, blank expression, Alex allowed himself to be directed out of the tiny room without resistance. "They've only had me long enough for preliminary testing," he reported, rattling off facts straightforwardly. "Nothing that would impede or distort anything more serious they might have planned for later. Just a few bruises and some puncturing here and there."
The flat affect was more and more worrying the longer it went on, and Cyclops made a mental note to shove his brother at some mental health professionals when they got back. Right now, though, there was no time to try and coax Alex out of it. They had to deal with the immediate emergency.
Cyclops clipped a guard running toward them, sending the man careening into a wall with enough force he did not immediately get back up. "Let's get you out of here, then.
"Did you see any other mutants here?" He asked as he began quickly directing Alex back towards where he'd left Pyro. They didn't want to leave anyone behind.
"Not this time," he said as Scott shepherded him into the hall. "I think I might have been the only one, this time ... But I wasn't paying that much attention. I coulda missed something, maybe."
"Okay." He made some rapid-fire calculations, involving Fatale's ability to actually follow orders and do as he asked, rather than sticking around to try and take some of the Right fuckers down then and there for their crimes. Since it was Alex in the balance, though, he decided the risk was minimized as it could be. "Fatale," he said into their comms, well aware she was listening. "Alex needs an evac."
"Coordinates?" Pam got to her feet awkwardly, glanced down at her palms which she'd pretty well shredded with her nails while trying to stay visible, and wiped them off on her pants. She'd deal with them later; it wasn't a priority right now. She looked up at Goody and explained, "They've got him. Gotta go."
Following Scott's lead back into the hall, Alex looked back at his brother, mildly curious. "I think we both need an evac, don't we? Is Fatale coming? I don't think I would like for her to see me like this." He paused. "I would like to leave, though."
Scott didn't blame Alex for not wanting Fatale to see him so...blank. Hurt. He knew from his own experience that far worse than experiencing the trauma yourself was watching someone you loved experience it second hand without being able to fix it for you. But Alex had to go back. He wasn't mission-ready and they weren't done, and Scott wanted a doctor to look at him.
"I think we'd both rather her see you like this than that she see you injured later," Scott pointed out. He read the coordinated on the comms to Fatale. He turned to Alex. "I'll see you on the other side."
Pam concentrated on the coordinates and opened a portal, then stepped through. And let out a sigh of relief as she saw Alex, who didn't look okay, per se, but who didn't look injured, either. Better than she'd let herself hope for, in any case, and the tightness in her chest eased, just a little. "C'mon, let's get out of here," she said, grabbing hold of his arm, then paused and looked at Scott. And frowned. "Where's everyone else?" she demanded. Because there'd been Eileen, and Billy, and Pyro. She wasn't about to leave all of them behind.
"Hi, Fatale," Alex said absently as she teleported in and took hold of his arm. When she started speaking, he looked in Scott's direction too, a furrow in his brow compromising the blank expression he'd worn up to that point ... even if it didn't seem quite entirely connected to their present circumstances. "We shouldn't go without the others. I wouldn't leave anybody here, while this place is still standing."
Cyclops looked at Fatale, "They're still here, and I'm staying, until we finish. But he needs to go back now; I'll call again once we're done and everyone is accounted for."
Pam eyed him levelly, then nodded. "I'll keep my comm on," she promised, then gave Alex's arm a tug. She recognized the dazed look - the sooner he got out of here, the better. "C'mon, let's go nuke some hot pockets for everyone," she urged. They could even actually do it, after Dr. Hank checked him out. It's give him something to not stare at for a while. Besides, he liked hot pockets.
"I like hot pockets," Alex noted. He gave Scott a look that had something like hesitation in it, but it passed quickly and he soon fell in beside Pam, waiting for the portal to open. If his brother said he was staying, then it didn't seem like it was worth arguing about, and being somewhere else sounded pretty good. Better than hot pockets, even.
As soon as they had teleported away, Cyclops began pounding on doors and listening for any noises inside; if there were any other prisoners here, he didn't want to miss them. "Pyro, status report." He said into the comms, casually punctuating it with firing the legs out from beneath a guard who had finally found his way to the action. Spotting an abandoned desk, he also grabbed a couple loose flash drives.
"Pretty fucking boring," Pyro reported, sounding exactly that bored. "Does it count as killing them if they die from smoke inhalati- shit!" There was the sound of a scuffle over the comms, and then, a few seconds later, Pyro's voice came back on, holding a very uncharacteristic hint of panic. "Shit, fuck! My fire's gone! They shot me with a thing and I can't - I can't control it anymore!"
***
"God fucking dammit," Eileen cursed under her breath as Pyro's voice chimed through the comms. Her glowing eyes darted toward Billy, dried blood caking one side of his face and carrying himself with that touch of gingerness that suggested he'd bruised or maybe even cracked a rib. She spared another glance for the pile of (still breathing!) bodies they'd made out of the staff and guards that had tried to escape. And even though she couldn't feel anything else headed their way just then, the bizarre weapons used by some the Right guards as they'd attempted to flee meant she couldn't be sure they didn't have some way to evade her electromagnetic sense.
"Fucking dammit," she repeated for good measure. "Cyclops, if you don't get Pyro out of there--and I mean fucking yesterday--I'm going in after him." It was a testament to how hard she was trying to follow Wanda's instructions that she remained outside with Billy; under most circumstances, she'd have stormed the place by then, orders be damned.
"On it." His voice was calm, even as he sprinted through the hall back to the command center. As he approached, there was a distinct smell of char, but no lingering heat. Whatever they had done to extinguish Pyro's flames had been complete. Cyclops slowed down, just a hair, as he approached, to give himself time to gauge the situation.
The entire area was filled with firefighting foam, and Pyro had been taking a few hits, trying as he was to fight, without fire or any sort of weapon, on the slippery floor. He'd just been brought down by a charged net, and he was convulsing on the floor, and in dire need of some help.
Rapid-fire calculations raced through Cyclops' head: the angle needed to toss the net off Pyro with his beam, the force, how to bounce it off the floor to achieve both those things, the safest place to aim so as not to dent Pyro. Within seconds, he'd triggered his visor, bouncing a beam off the floor to knock the net off of him.
Attention now on him, he began rapidly firing on their attackers, knocking them into walls, breaking weapon-holding hands, but given their number and Pyro's vulnerability he knew he'd be fighting an uphill battle. "You able to move?" He asked.
Pyro was having trouble remembering how to breathe, and each breath hurt like a bitch, but he eventually groaned something that resembled an affirmative answer, and slowly got to his feet, stumbling towards Cyclops.
Cyclops cleared his way of debris and attackers before meeting Pyro in the middle. Cyclops wrapped an arm around the other teen and began leading him out, hampered slightly by the tedious exercise of shooting the assholes in their way.
He was fast, faster than most, at noticing visual shifts - his eyesight guaranteed it - but with so much to take in, even his special eyesight didn't make him invulnerable. He caught the lift of a guard's arm a fraction of a second too late in the melee, and a bullet (luckily conventional) hit him hard in the stomach. No puncture - he'd have to tell the school this high tech shit worked - but it still hurt and, worse, pissed him off.
Cyclops fired an optic beam at the offending guard harder than was strictly necessary, sending him into a metal wall hard enough to make him scream.
Scott pretended not to notice.
Pyro fucking hated feeling so wobbly-kneed that he had to lean on Summers to move fast enough, but there he went anyway. Fucking electric net shits! When Cyclops got shot, he flicked his wrist and instinctively tried to throw fire at his attacker, but of course, he fucking couldn't. What if this was forever? What then? He couldn't be a fucking flatscan, he just couldn't.
At least this flatscan hit the wall painfully enough, and Pyro had to point out, through gritted teeth, "You're opening both of us up to injury by going soft on them."
Scott bit back his immediate response, which was something to the effect that his unsolicited advice was duly noted and would be ignored accordingly. In a mission was not the time to tell his own team to shove it. "I will get us out of here," was all he offered instead.
They were nearly to the door. One shot, two, rebounding off walls to get the few remaining guards out of their way. The sound of cracking bones and shouts of pain provided background noise, but it was easy enough to brush aside. They hadn't come to make friends and hadn't shot first. Another few feet and one last push took them outside.
Once targets had ceased pouring out of the facility, Billy had let himself shut down. No anger, no conversation. Alex was safe. He had part of what he'd come for, anyway. Now it was just waiting to be allowed to leave, to go back to Goodnight.
He glanced over Scott and Pyro, expression dead and blank. "Are we done here?" he asked, no inflection in his voice.
Eileen, for her part, glowered at the pile of unconscious bodies she and Billy had made out of those attempting to flee the facility. Sure, the comm-chatter suggested that Alex was safe, and that Pam had gotten him out of there, but ...
"What kind of shape is Summers in?" demanded the blond, the emergency lighting pooling from ransacked lab dipping and guttering dangerously as her temper rose. Maybe she wasn't allowed to kill anybody, but she could damn sure make them wish they were dead. And she would, if they'd gone and undone what progress they'd been able to make with Alex over the last several months since they'd rescued him the first time.
"Physically intact." Cyclops reported without inflection, whether or not he was concerned about his own brother's well-being would remain a mystery.
"Fatale," he called over the comma, "need an extraction."
