In Fire

 

They'd moved.

Everett had come to her one day, shortly after Rahne had left for Muir with Bobby Drake, and handed her an obscene amount of money. She hadn't asked where the money had come from, and he hadn't volunteered the information, but he told her what she already knew- that it was time to go. They weren't safe in Los Angeles any longer. Too many people knew where they were. Jubilee had jokingly suggested that they set up in Kentucky. Ironically, it had turned out to be the best location, and they'd acquired a small building deep in the hills. They gathered their equipment and 'ported it over, only taking what was essential.

That had been about three months ago.

The machines in the cramped office whirred softly. A small bank of computers were set up along one wall, with two seated figures tapping into them madly.

Abruptly Rahne brought her hands crashing down onto the keyboard and scowled at it.

"I thought you had it," Patrick remarked mildly as he continued to type into his terminal.

"So did I," Rahne groused as she flipped through the small stack of scancards on her desk. Selecting one, she inserted it into the machine's top feed. "It was almost there," she complained bitterly, "but it locked up at the last section."

"Huh. Do you think that it's part of the last sequence or if it's further back?"

"I don't know." She hit a couple of keys and waited for the decryption program to boot. "Could be either. How is yours going?"

Patrick tossed her a winning smile. "Better than yours. I cracked it about five minutes ago."

Rahne dived out of her seat and began to read the information on the monitor over his shoulder.
"Oh, now that's.. If that's what I think it is, " she breathed, "it should tell us exactly what those little bastards were up to."

"It looks like it's some kind of record of procedures," Patrick murmured quietly.

"What kind of procedures?"

Paige's voice bounced through the room. "Are those the files we pulled out of the lab with Drake?"

Rahne ran her finger down the monitor and nodded, tentatively. "It looks like they are." She glanced over her shoulder to where Paige stood in the doorway. "Have you seen Simon? He was supposed to help us with this this morning."

Paige shook her head. "Nah. He should be in Milwaukee with Ange, Ev and Jubes scouting out a center."

"You sent them on a mission?" The surprise registered in Patrick's voice as he twirled around in his chair. "When was this decided?"

"Last night." Paige crossed the room to peer over his shoulder at the data. "'..subject appears to have the ability to control all water particles in his vicinity to the extent that he was able to cause the water molecules in a technician's hand to expand and shatter from the opposite side of the cell..' Huh. Go Bobby."

"And you didn't tell us?"

The ill-concealed anger in Rahne's voice brought Paige's gaze to her and she straightened her spine, holding herself rigidly. "It was a last minute decision. You had already gone to sleep when we located the center. We felt that the four of them could handle a simple reconnaisance mission on their own, and there was no need to get you up." She reached out and dropped a hand on the other woman's shoulder. "We thought you could use a rest. God knows you've been working on this data practically non-stop."

"I don't like that we weren't told, Paige." Rahne caught her gaze and held it. "We need to know what's going on," she explained. "The last time you didn't tell us what you were about, you came back with a half-dead priest."

Paige relaxed into a curt nod. "You're right. Now, can we go over some of this?" She waved her hand at the monitor.

Rahne nodded, slowly. "All right." She headed over to the computer and then turned back with a mildly malicious glint in her eye. "But since you already sent off my help, you have to take his place."

"Sounds fair." Paige agreed, warily.

"You would think."

Bobby kicked restlessly at the bed sheet. He'd already managed to get it all the way down the bed, but it was still touching his feet, and that was bothering him. He wanted it to fall over the side or get stuck at the bottom or something. He just didn't want it touching him. He supposed that he could just sit up and throw it on the floor, but that was just too much effort. That and Moira would only come back in and put it back on him. She didn't seem to get it.

She was getting better about letting him do things for himself now, though. Like, she was letting him sit up by himself and cut the nasty grey thing she called a chicken dinner. But she still wouldn't let him have any coffee, (which was really more of a blessing,) and there was definitely no getting out of bed on his own in his future.

The television channels sucked. He knew that Moira had screened them for anything that she thought might cause him to become 'overexcited', which meant there was nothing on but a bunch of really boring nature programs. He was going to mention it to Hank when he came back.

It was hard to talk to Hank now. He would come in and stare at him when he thought Bobby wasn't looking, as if he was afraid he'd disappear again. They'd talk about stuff, yeah, but never what Bobby really wanted to know, like what had happened while he was gone. Just stupid things. He got flustered when Bobby tried to press him.

Hank never used to get flustered around him before.

But he'd come and they'd joke around, trying to pretend everything was all right and just the same as it used to be. Except for the silences. And the stares. And the avoidances. And then Hank would go and Bobby had a lot more time to himself than he really wanted, which he was beginning to think was worse then having people around him all the time.

He remembered that there had been a lot of people around when he'd arrived at Muir. Hank and Moira. Jean, Scott, and Rahne for a while. He thought anyway. Moira had had him heavily sedated because he had been pretty fucked up, but he was fairly sure those were the people he'd seen. And at the time it had seemed like there were too many people around. Jean kept looking at him with those sad, sad eyes that she kept trying to hide.

Part of the problem was that he kept freaking out. But if you'd been held hostage in a lab for over five years, you'd freak out a lot too, he figured. Moira had thought that he'd been overstimulated or some such shit and told them all to go. It was too quiet with everyone gone, though. Much too quiet. Too many machines and tubes and restraints and *needles* and-

Too much fucking time to think.

He knew that something wasn't right. He wasn't an idiot. He could see the looks Moira and Hank exchanged. Hell, he could feel the ache in his chest everytime he spoke, laughed, breathed.

He just wanted to know what was going on.

Kitty hummed tunelessly along with the radio as she flew up the highway. North on 81 to Canada, alone on the road because no one used the old highways anymore. Too inconvienient and slow, now that the superways were all connected, but that suited her purposes for now. It'd give her time to think. Give her time to plan.

She had kept her end of the bargain. Damned if she wasn't going to make Daneson keep his.

Paige, Patrick, and Rahne were still going over data, when the door opened and the mission team stumbled into the office at about noon.

"They were already gone," Everett announced as he began to strip out of his jacket and headgear.

"Shit." Paige got up and went over to the map they had tacked to the wall. Using a red marker, she drew a cross through Milwaukee. "They're clearing them all out."

"It looks like it," Jubilee stripped her hands out of a pair of gloves and looked up at the other woman seriously. "It was completely empty when we got there. No papers, no computers, no people, nothing. They were gone."

Paige studied the map intently. "Damn."

Jubilee and Everett exchanged glances behind her back. "Hey, Paige, how many were supposed to be in this one?"

"Um, five." Paige began tracing the different dots and crosses with her finger.

"And how many were in the one last week? The one that was half-packed up?"

"Two. Your point?" Paige turned to them with a questioning expression.

Everett stepped further into the room. "It's just that out of the last few sites we've been to, it seems like the ones that are supposed to hold more than a couple of mutants have been been abandoned. The ones with only two or three look like they're planning to take off, but there's still stuff there."

"There weren't any mutants at the last one," she pointed out.

"True, but the paperwork was still there," Simon chimed in. "We have a theory," he added, excitedly.

Jubilee shot him a look and went to sit across from Paige. "Here's how we see it. The sites with a bunch of people are probably something like low security. Low grade powers or something. They probably don't need a bunch of extra security measures, so they're easy to move. However the smaller site probably are higher security or require special things. That last one we were at, where were we, Ev?"

"Bangor."

"Right, Bangor. That one had some kind of room that looked like a giant fish tank. For like, say, someone who needs to be underwater to breathe. One wall was all glass." Jubilee traced a rectangle in the air to illustrate. "Anyway, we got some stuff out of there, and I mean, now we know that they probably do have someone with some kind of aquatic mutation."

"Which means we have to be prepared for him if we find him," Angelo added quietly from he position beside the door.

Paige nodded. "So what your saying is that you want to try the lower numbered sites because you figure there's a better chance of finding something at those." Paige looked over at Rahne who was still seated at her computer. "What do you think?"

"I suppose. But if that 'Three' site was half-moved last week, they're probably gone by now. Who's to say they're all not gone?"

"That's why we want to try a 'One' or 'Two' site, probably tomorrow night." Ev put in smoothly.

"Just to scout."

"Tomorrow. We've got to move on these if they're all packing up and moving further underground," he confirmed.

Patrick pulled up the site chart on his screen. "There's a handful of remaining 'One' and 'Two' sites. Knoxville, Plano, Buffalo, Colorado Springs, Metairie, Ann Arbor, Athens, Toledo and Gary. Knoxville, Buffalo and Colorado Springs are the 'One' sites."

"It's a good theory, but do you think it's absolutely correct?" Rahne leaned forward in her chair.

Jubilee cocked her head. "Why? I mean, and the recent trips out to the centers seem to support it."

Rahne waved her hand vaguely. "I know, it's just, unless we're sure, it feels like we're choosing to let several lives go in favor of one or two, at times."

"You can't save everybody," Jubilee said, softly.

Rahne looked up at her through her eyelashes. "I can damned well try."

"Guys." Patrick pushed across the floor in his chair to rest between the two women. "C'mon."

Rahne turned away. "What do you think?" she asked.

"I think," he began slowly, "that since there's been nothing at the last few sites, changing our approach can't hurt us at this point." He shrugged."If nothing else, they may have information that we could use, which God knows we need and haven't been getting."

"Paige?" Angelo put out his hands before him. "What do you think?"

She exhaled audibly. "I think Patrick has the right of it. We've nothing to lose at this point." She ran her gaze over to the Scotswoman. "Rahne?"

She shrugged. "I'm fine."

Jubilee smiled broadly. "Anyone else? No? Then let's pick a center."

After the meeting, Paige went back to going over data with Rahne, Patrick and Angelo, while Simon claimed the shower. Jubilee flung herself out on their bed, grinning to herself.

"You're happy, then?" Everett loomed over her with an almost concerned expression on his face.

"Yup. I didn't think they'd go for it that easily." Jubilee stretched her arms over her head and sighed. "I am so tired and icky. I need to shower. I wonder if- What?" She looked up and saw that Everett was still watching her intently.

"And you're not just happy that we're checking out a 'One' site tomorrow, right?"

"Huh?" After a moment, Jubilee's expression went carefully blank as she slid off the edge of the bed and started to brush by her husband. "I don't get it. I'm gonna go see if Simon's out of the bathroom yet."

Everett caught her wrist. "Because Bobby Drake was in a 'One' site as well, and I know you noticed that." He jostled her arm gently. "It might not be him. I don't want you to be disappointed if it's not him. I don't want you doing anything crazy, girl."

Jubilee she pulled away from him. "Don't. Just don't," she hissed at him, her eyes narrowed.

"Jubilee." Everett made to pull her into his arms, but she'd already started sprinting down the hall.

"I don't want to talk about it!"

Hank slipped into Bobby's room quietly, his gaze running over the man sprawled on the bed. Moira had said that he was restless today, demanding better television at the very least. She'd seemed affronted by that. He suppressed a small chuckle. After he'd checked to see what she'd considered suitable, he had been surprised that Bobby had put up with it as long as he had.

The old Bobby wouldn't have.

"Hey." Bobby has twisted himself so that he could gaze at his visitor. "Took you long enough. I was beginning to wonder if you were gonna show today."

"I had to work on a few... things before I could come down." Hank dragged a chair over to the side of the bed and whispered conspiritorally, "Channel 6 is Monty Python."

Bobby grinned and propped himself up on his elbows. "You got my message. Thanks."

"Not a problem."

Silence.

"Hank?"

Hank turned to his companion. "Yeah, Bobby?"

"When are you going to tell me what's going on and stop trying to avoid it?" Bobby asked, casually.

Hank began to bluster. "I'm not-"

"No, see, you are. You're doing it now. You won't answer any of my questions. I ask harmless stuff, even, like, 'How are you and Cece doing,' and you dodge it. I ask what you're working on, and you point out the cracks in the ceiling. I asked who the damned president was, and you ran to the bathroom. It's like I'm in a vacuum here. You won't tell me what's going on, anywhere, and I can't even get the fucking news on the television, for Christ's sake!" Bobby flung his arms out in frustration. "It's starting to drive me crazy!"

"We broke up, Legacy, still, and Tom Hanks."

"What?" Bobby's eyes widened.

Dark blue fur rippled as Hank quirked his shoulder. "All right, maybe Tom Hanks isn't the president."

Bobby sighed and flopped back down on the bed. "You know what I mean, Hank."

"No, I do." Hank deflated and bowed his head. "But you've been through a great deal, and a lot has happened in the past six years. We didn't want to overwhelm you."

"Fine. Whelm me." Bobby crossed his arms over his chest.

"I don't think that's a word," Hank muttered blackly.

"HANK."

"All right." The large man shifted in his chair. "From what we can gather, you were taken for something called the Landrax Project. It seems to be an underground goverment project that harvests mutant talent for its own use." Hank pinched the bridge of his nose and stared at the floor intently. "They didn't take too many of the high profile mutants, like you. I mean, we noticed when you went missing. Jean just about lost it when we discovered that you were gone and hadn't made it to your parents. She and Scott were at the Mansion almost as soon as we hung up with them. She-" He broke off and started again. "You see, we-"

"Wait," Bobby protested. "What were you going to say? You cut yourself off."

"What?" Hank kept his head down. "I didn't..just. Let me get through this, Bobby. Okay?" He looked up and finally made eye contact with the other man. "Just let me get through it."

Bobby nodded.

"You disappeared. We didn't know what had happened. No one had seen you. Jean used Cerebra for days trying to locate you, and then Emma took over when Scott finally insisted that she rest. Months went by. Probably not even a year and Lorna went missing as well. We were able to get a fix on her out in Colorado, but by the time we got out there, there wasn't a trace of her to be found."

Hank stood and paced across the room. "I- it felt like we weren't doing enough. We didn't know whether you were alive, dead. Relations got bad within the teams. Half of them split off to form an international branch. Ororo, Betsy, Warren, Emma. The Professor...Jesus."

Bobby blanched. "The Professor went with the international teams?"

Hank turned away from him. "No. The Professor. The Professor had a stroke, shortly after you...disappeared. He never regained consciousness. After he died a kind of council was set up to oversee the teams and- I'm getting off track here. We lost you, Lorna, Logan and Remy all within the space of three years. We thought we had lost Rogue as well."

"But you didn't."

Hank flinched. "No."

"You found her, but you couldn't find the rest of us." Bobby's voice took on a hollow tone.

"It wasn't like that. We didn't find her either. Theresa found her lying at the edge of the property several months later, like she had been dumped there for us to find." Hank crossed back over to the chair. "You see, it turned out that the project decided at some point that taking 'celebrity' mutants such as ourselves wasn't working. Too much effort and we raised too much of a commotion when one of our own disappeared. And by now there are so many duplicates of mutations, we've always seen it in the telepaths, but it's spread to others, like pyrokinetics, that they don't have to. They turned to taking children, instead. Those who had just manifested or were about to manifest. They abducted them, and then.."

"Used them like they used me," Bobby finished for him, his cheeks rapidly taking on color as his voice rose.

"Yes."

"Fuck, Hank. When the hell was anyone going to tell me any of this?" Bobby forced himself upright in bed, the IVs in his arm straining his skin as he moved. "I mean, didn't you think that MAYBE this might be something I should know?"

"Bobby. Calm down."

"Why? Why should I do that, Hank?" Bobby snapped.

"Because if you don't, I'll have to sedate you. That's why," he bit back.

That seemed to have desired effect, and Bobby sat staring at the walls for several minutes afterward.

"So how did you find me. Was it an accident? Did you just stumble across me?" He asked quietly.

Hank gave him a measured look. "Actually, we didn't find you. Paige did."

"Paige... Guthrie?" Bobby raised an incredulous eyebrow when Hank nodded. "I thought she was done, off 'finding herself' in Mexico or something."

"She came back, four..five years ago. Started her own team. Well, not really back. She wouldn't have anything to do with us, not to mention what she was doing is slightly illegal. Calling herself Meta. We didn't even recognize her until one night she and Rahne Sinclair got caught on camera together."

Bobby whistled under his breath. "Rahne? Scared, super religious, little Rahne was doing illegal things?"

"Which probably pertained to helping others like yourself, I might point out, so she probably didn't see it that way."

"But.. how did you know she was with Paige?"

"Mm? Oh. Sam knew." Hank shook his head. "He didn't seem surprised by it."

"Huh. Her and Rahne."

"And some others. A couple of the kids. Everett and J-" Hank swallowed the sentance abruptly.

Bobby didn't seem to notice. "Jesus. Everett went over to the dark side without Jubilee, huh?"

Hank felt his throat close. "Bobby, about Jubilee..."

"It was the funniest fucking thing. I must have almost died in that hole, 'cause I swear I thought I saw her there, y'know? Waiting for me." He shook his head and looked up at Hank, his eyes glittering. "I've gotta be delusional, right?"

Hank's voice was almost inaudible. "No. No, I wouldn't say you were delusional."

"No." Bobby shook his head, the look in his eyes wild. "Jubilee died. I saw her die, myself. I was there, remember?"

"Jubilee is most certainly not dead. She's with Paige's team right now. She was the one who found you at the center."

Bobby was silent for a long moment. When he finally spoke, his voice was soft and harsh. "So what you're saying is not only is she not dead, but I tried to kill her."

"Bobby, you weren't in your right mind.." Hank reached out to place a steadying hand on Bobby's shoulder, but Bobby wrenched away him.

"No! Don't fucking touch me. I don't want anyone to touch me!" Bobby struck out at Hank, but missed. "Jesus. It just keeps getting fucking better and better," he yelled. "Kill her once shame on you, kill her twice, shame on me. I can't fucking believe this!"

Hank stood and went over to one of the cabinets by the door and picked up a syringe.

The movement drew Bobby's attention and he froze. He eyed the instrument Hank held nervously. "No, see, Hank? I'm fine. I don't need to be sedated." His body began to shake as he tried to hold it tightly in check. "I'm not going to do anything stupid. You can, um, put that away now."

Hank raised an eyebrow. "You're done?"

Bobby nodded jerkily.

Hank watched him for a moment and put down the needle. "All right. You want a drink?" he asked.

"Heh. Sure." Bobby frowned a bit, confused at the abrupt change of topic.

"What do you want? Water? Soda? Milk?" Hank rummaged around in a cupboard for a moment, producing a small tumbler.

"Water's fine." He watched as Hank pulled a bottle of water out of a small refrigerator under the cabinets and poured it into the glass. Accepting it, he drank quickly.

"More?"

"No." Bobby handed the cup back to Hank and clasped his arms around his legs while the other man settled into the chair beside him.

A few minutes later, he tumbled back against the pillows, asleep.

Hank pulled the covers up over him and covered the sleeping man's hand with his own.

Moira found him sitting like that an hour later.

"Hank, what's going on?" she asked, startling him as she came up behind them.

"I told him what he wanted to know." Hank shrugged defeatedly. "What happened and everything. He deserved to know." He stood and stretched, muscles popping. "He became overwrought and I..." He picked up the glass from the floor and took it over to the sink, rinsing out the remaining contents.

Moira looked as if she was going to chastise him, but instead shook her head. "Come with me, then. Rahne is on the phone and wants to speak to you about some things they've found."

"Did you see this?" Angelo turned to Paige as she re-entered the room with a sheet of paper in his hand.

Paige shook her head and took it from him. "Oh my Lord."

"Pat pulled it up while you were gone. It's a screencap from a video he managed to open."

"That's just-- that's just..." Paige sat down hard beside Angelo and let the picture drop nervelessly from her fingers. The image of Bobby's unconscious and lacerated body stared up at her. Crooked lines of stitches ran across his chest and abdomen while a green-clad surgeon made an incision just under his collarbone. "Did Rahne see this?"

He nodded. "I think she's on the phone with McCoy now. Patrick's setting up that and a few other things to send over."

"And there's a video," she stated, dully.

"There's a couple."

Patrick skidded into the room and began to rustle around in a pile of his notes. "That's not the worst of it," he commented, noticing Paige's frozen expression. "The one where they have him iced up and begin shooting off his limbs to see if they'll regenerate is enough to give even you nightmares. Hah!" Holding a slip of paper covered in dense scrawls over his head triumphantly, he bounded back out of the room. "Found it, Rahne.."

Angelo watched Paige shuffle through a stack of screenshots mechanically. "They'll give 'even you nightmares,' eh?"

"That kid has no idea what kinds of nightmares I have," she mumbled.

Angelo nodded. He stuck his hands in his pockets and cleared his throat. "I'm feeling kind of beat. I'm gonna turn in."

"All right. You could have gone earlier. I'm sure Ev and Jubes did. Y'all were up all night."

He nodded. "True. Well. Good night."

She didn't look up as she continued slowly flipping through the pages. "'Night."

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