Past Imperfect - REVIEW THIS STORY

Written by Cassandra Fraser
Last updated: 01/02/2007 02:01:11 AM

Chapter 1

He supposed that doing murder had been in the back of his mind all along. But today it came to forefront of his thoughts, as he awoke again in a bed that wasn't his. All his tortures and machinations, be they subtle or particularly gruesome, were not enough to satisfy him. He would kill his guest. Very soon and with his own bare hands--no more deathtraps, no murder by proxy. The man chained in the secret place must die.

"Or else," the creature said to his own reflection, "I will never be The Real McCoy."

Remy LeBeau cursed under his breath as he fumbled for a towel in the sudden darkness of an expired light bulb while taking a shower. Since his own room was in the wing of the X-Men's mansion destroyed by Onslaught, he'd been sleeping in Warren's room while renovations were in progress. Warren and Betsy were spending most of their time in town these days, which was just fine with Gambit: He wasn't crazy about the prospect of having to watch another couple in love--not while his Rogue was keeping company with Magneto and flaunting it in front of him.

His questing fingers touched a thick terrycloth robe. Remy slipped his arms into the robe quickly and belted it around his narrow waist, shaking his long auburn-brown hair over the shawl collar, so that it fell in a wet mass over his shoulders and down his back. Still dripping water all over the marble tile floor, he stepped into the the lighted bedroom.

"What you doin' here, mon ami?" he asked of the Beast.

Hank McCoy was literally perched on the footboard of his bed, opposable toes hooked into the cherrywood four-poster.

"You've just come out of the shower."

Gambit shrugged. "Yah. Maybe I smell good enough for Roguie now, eh?"

"That won't happen until you stop smoking. Filthy habit you have there, my young friend."

"Tryin' to quit."

"I find it amazing that your lungs are perfect--your tidal volumes, pulmonary wedge pressures, mean expiratory volumes, blood pHs--indeed, your very alveoli themselves--are as healthy as an infant's. A nonsmoking infant's, that is. Physiologically speaking, one would not imagine you to be a devotee of nicotine unless they happened to witness you in the act of ingesting it."

"Mebbe not such a bad habit for Remy LeBeau, eh?"

"You have missed your calling--just think of the fortune that the RJ Reynolds tobacco company would bestow upon you to be their spokesman. Your X-rays alone would have them salivating. Think of it--fame, wealth--"

"Dat's all I need. T'have my picture all over de place. I'd rather be invis'ble, in my line a' work." Remy caught himself, then went on to clarify. "As an ex-t'ief and current X-Man, o'course."

"You know, I really would appreciate it if you would spend some time with me in my laboratory. This apparent imperviousness to tobacco toxins may be another manifestations of your mutant abilities--you do have an interesting range of powers--superhuman agility, able to convert potential energy into kinetic energy, and that charm power of yours. It seems to be an empathic talent, possibly not even mutant in nature, and may come in useful--we abound in telepaths, but there might arise a situation in which knowing the feelings and instincts of one's foe might be more useful than being able to read his or her thoughts."

"Pah. Gambit nobody's guinea pig."

"Let me share a smidgen of my wisdom with you, child: Never say never."

Another shrug, then Remy's red eyes narrowed into slits. He was suddenly uncomfortable, and didn't know why--perhaps the speech was slightly wrong, perhaps it was Hank's insistence on his being a subject for experimentation--when he knew full well that Remy was intimidated by laboratories. Hank had expressed an interest in more intensive studies on Gambit, but hadn't pressed the issue when Remy declined the invitation. Perhaps it was the way McCoy sat there, almost coiled, like a big hairy cobra. "You still not answered my question, M'sieur Henri. Why you here?"

It happened too fast for Gambit to gain the upper hand: Beast suddenly bulleted at him with the speed and ferocity of a demon. One enormous paw closed around Remy's face, along with half of his head, sealing off his mouth and nose. The other paw seized both his wrists before he could grasp and charge the table lamp with kinetic energy to defend himself, and squeezed until Remy's hands opened.

Remy struggled, but the Beast was too heavy, too strong. The Cajun couldn't breathe, couldn't scream for help. Still holding his head, McCoy released his wrists only long enough to snake his free arm around Remy's chest, lifting him off his feet and squeezing his rib cage. "Calm down, dear boy," came the whisper in Remy's ear. "I don't want to have to hurt you--yet."

Dressed in only a robe, unable to get his hands on any inanimate object he could charge with kinetic energy, and pitted against the only X-Man with greater agility than his own--but with more than twenty times the strength he possessed, Remy fought against overwhelming odds, even as his lungs seemed about to burst from lack of oxygen. Beast seemed to enjoy watching him struggle. "You have very little consciousness left to you, Remy. I suppose there's no point in suggesting your cooperation, is there?"

For answer, McCoy felt bare feet kicking against his shins. He chuckled, then squeezed more tightly, little by little. Finally, the slim body in his arms went limp but McCoy didn't relax his grip for several minutes after that: Gambit was known for trickery and it would be just his style to fake unconsciousness. McCoy aimed to make certain that there would be none of Gambit's ruses this time.

And there weren't. Remy had blacked out some time earlier from lack of air. But McCoy knew he didn't have much time before the Cajun came around again. He tossed Gambit onto the bed and went in search of towels. Finding several, he tore them into strips and effectively bound the younger mutant's wrists and ankles with the thick cloth, winding the strips in a series of complicated knots between Gambit's deadly fingers to separate them so that he couldn't use the dexterity that had freed all of them from many a trap. He tied Gambit's wrists in front of him so that he could keep an eye on them: It was a mistake to have Gambit's hands so that you couldn't see them. Lastly, he tied a thick strip of cloth over Remy's mouth; the Cajun wouldn't be quiet, he knew; and over his eyes--if he didn't know immediately where he was, he might be more hesitant before causing ruin and destruction.

McCoy suspected that Gambit had doubted him when he swore to the X-Men that Onslaught was controlling his mind. The Cajun hadn't voiced his suspicions, but McCoy could sense that he wasn't altogether convinced. So McCoy had had to wait for a moment like this, when he could catch the Cajun vulnerable--and how much more vulnerable can a person possibly be than when stepping out of a bathtub? McCoy had recently worked out an implant he wore in the dense fur behind his ears to mask his thoughts from the telepaths living in the X-Mansion, but Gambit was an empath--highly sensitive to the feelings and emotions of others. He could use those perceptions against an enemy and would often charm his way in and out of the worst situations, which was another weapon in his bag of tricks that McCoy knew to watch out for.

McCoy's best-laid plans were crumbling around him: He had taken refuge in this reality in order to hide from his Apocalyptic master Mr. Sinister; however, living with the X-Men had proven anything but a safe hiding place from which he couldcontinue his genetic research. Especially now that he knew there was some sort of connection between Mr. Sinister and young Remy LeBeau. If LeBeau chose to confide in Sinister or in his fellow X-Men, McCoy knew that his days were numbered. Secondly, McCoy determined that he should take one of the X-Men to his tunnel labs as hostage to replace the soon-to-be-deceased Beast, just in case. Who better than LeBeau--who would be missed, but had a reputation for being a loner who came and went without explaining himself? No one need know that he had been abducted, until it was too late. It had crossed his mind that the X-Men might not bother to rescue the likes of Gambit, but he knew that wasn't true: The X-Men would rescue anything. They'd proven it hundreds of times. Meanwhile, McCoy would have his hostage, a most interesting subject for genetic experimentation, and ensure Sinister's continued ignorance of McCoy's presence in this reality.

He carefully lifted Gambit, and was pleased to note that the young mutant had a light frame for his height; he weighed very little to McCoy and so would be easy to carry--another plus. Provided he stayed unconscious for the trip. McCoy had a small bottle of chloroform tucked into his back pocket just for the occasion, and briefly considered the liberal use of it--he worried about the risk to Gambit's mutant physiology; he had no intention of killing this prisoner and decided to use the drug only if necessary, and then sparingly.

McCoy was about to open the door and steal out of the Mansion when he heard a knock on the other side of the door. "Hey, Gumbo!" came the voice from without, and McCoy recognized it as Logan's. "We're all goin' to Harry's for some brewskis--wanna tag along?"

He froze. If any X-Man could stop him now, it would be Logan. His enhanced senses would hear any muffled cries if Gambit chose regain consciousness, would smell the chloroform if it became necessary to sedate the Cajun.

Another knock. "You in there, kid?"

McCoy didn't dare breathe. In his arms, Gambit showed no sign of life beyond even--if shallow--breathing. McCoy hoped that Logan wouldn't use his heightened senses to detect if the room really was vacant or not; if he chose to enter, it was going to be impossible to explain why McCoy was in the process of carrying a bound and blindfolded Gambit out of the X-Mansion.

But Logan had no reason to suspect foul play. They were in their own home, after all; the Onslaught crisis was over and they were safe. He must have decided that Gambit had left the Mansion, and who could blame him, with Rogue and Magneto billing and cooing right in front of him--because McCoy heard Wolverine turn on his heel and head back out toward the foyer of the house, muttering something about this younger generation. Outside, McCoy heard a car engine fire up, heard the voices of Ororo, Sam, Bobby, Warren, and others--even Joseph and Rogue. Scott and Jean were most likely to be found in their boathouse home on the grounds, still on their perpetual honeymoon. Professor Xavier had a speaking engagement for the evening.

A stifled moan interrupted McCoy's thoughts: Gambit was waking up, and not happy about his situation. "Shhhhhhh," he whispered to the Cajun, which of course had exactly the opposite effect. Remy renewed his struggling--admittedly not much, thanks to being effectively hogtied, but with enough squirming to make carrying him more difficult.

"I don't suppose you would consider being the strong silent type for a few hours?" McCoy asked.

He got a muffled roar for an answer. No surprise there. Oh well, with the Mansion emptied in the pursuit of intoxication, perhaps he would be able to leave undetected with his captive in spite of all that struggling. McCoy happened to look down at Gambit's hands: They were nearly free of the towel strips binding them--if he didn't stop and retie the Cajun, he'd find himself contending with some destructive and unpleasant mutant powers--not to mention a very bad attitude.

"Hush!"

Trying to hold Gambit was like trying to cradle an angry cat. Remy's body was amazingly graceful for his height, lean yet supple and strong, with muscles that seemed to flow over his bones. There was nothing for it but to resort to the chloroform. McCoy dropped to his haunches, still holding Gambit across his lap so that he couldn't get his hands on the floor and explode the hardwood. He soaked a piece of towel with the chloroform and clamped it over the Cajun's nose for several moments. Subjugation seemed forever in coming, but Gambit finally stopped thrashing and settled back into unconsciousness; McCoy temporarily removed the blindfold to check his eyes and make certain that he was indeed asleep and not faking it. Sure enough, the red pupils were dilated and unresponsive. Quickly, he re-knotted the ties about Gambit's wrists, scooped up the Cajun again, and headed for the nearest exit. He again briefly considered soaking the gag with chloroform, but hesitated out of concern for its unpredictable effects--best to keep it in reserve until he had no other recourse.

"Where are you taking my father?"

McCoy ground his fangs together at the sound of Bishop's rumbling query. In the dim light, he could see the huge X-Man looming near the back door of the Mansion. Curse the luck, it was just like that big hemorrhoid Bishop to stay home and guard the fort.

"Ah, friend Bishop, we were just going out for a drive. Would you care to join us?"

The unmistakable click of a plasma rifle being cocked.

"You really should schedule a counseling session with me," McCoy said. "You continually refer to this young man as your father, but there isn't the slightest family resemblance and you are yourself almost old enough to be LeBeau's father. I have next Thursday at three P.M. open; shall I expect you then?"

"Put Gambit down--NOW--and step away from him."

"I'd rather not."

Bishop took a step closer.

"McCoy, if you've hurt him . . ."

"Why don't you see for yourself?" With that, McCoy did the totally unexpected: He THREW Gambit directly at Bishop. The X-Man from the future had to drop his rifle in order to catch the Cajun, and he did so, instinctively. That second of hesitation in unfriendly fire was all McCoy needed for his second surprise move: He came at Bishop with all the fury his teeth and claws would muster--which was considerable. Bishop was unable to defend both himself and Remy, who was unavoidably thrust between them in the middle of the fight. McCoy's claws were sharp and long, as were his fangs; he used them randomly and ruthlessly, rending and lacerating whatever he touched.

Which was mostly Bishop, because he tried to shield Remy from the furious blur of talons and teeth. McCoy was relentless; he didn't even give Bishop a chance to drop Gambit safely out of harm's way--he was too close, too fast, and he had no scruples whatsoever. Growling deep in his throat, this Beast was capable of a berserker fury that would have impressed even Wolverine. Bishop was more than impressed--he was utterly unprepared for the scholarly, gregarious Hank McCoy to suddenly turn into a raging predator. And to add to his difficulties, Remy had awakened somewhat again--blindfolded as he was, he had no way of knowing that he was in the arms of a friend who was trying to protect him: All he knew was that McCoy had gone crazy and was making a highly successful attempt of abducting him for reasons he couldn't begin to guess at.

And then the worst thing possible happened: In his confused, woozy state, Gambit's kinetic charge powers began to kick in. McCoy noticed that his bound hands had started to glow; the Cajun probably wasn't even conscious of it.

With the strength of a grizzly bear, McCoy hooked an arm around Gambit's waist and tore him away from Bishop's grip, then dropped him on his face on the floor. He only had to tussle with Bishop for another minute before he saw the floor glowing beneath them. Kicking Bishop so hard that the big man staggered back a few steps, McCoy quickly slung the Cajun's body over his shoulder and leapt from the bay window.

Moments after the hitherto undamaged wing of the X-Mansion exploded with the force of a thousand tons of nitroglycerin ignited alive, McCoy happily wheeled his Jeep onto the main road. What a convenient turn of events! The blast would eliminate Bishop's body, along with the evidence of claw and teeth marks. Further, it would be blamed on Gambit, greatly reducing the Cajun's hopes for an X-posse and a rescue. He himself was an unlikely suspect; after all, he was a founding member of the team, wasn't he--and he had thoughtfully left a note in the intact wing of the mission that he was leaving Westchester for a seminar.

Beside him on the front seat, Gambit stirred slightly. McCoy was driving with his feet: He needed both hands to keep Gambit lying on his back, unable to charge up and explode the Jeep. The dark head pillowed on McCoy's thigh moved slightly to the side. McCoy decided that he'd had enough experience with using chloroform on the Cajun to apply it judiciously and with some measure of confidence: He upended the bottle over the gag, soaking it with chloroform; in all likelihood, he would have to contend with a nauseated, vomiting victim once Gambit regained consciousness--but better that than to be pulled over by the gendarmes and have to explain what you were doing driving along while wrestling with a young man tied up beside you--especially when you have fangs and blue fur. Just in case, McCoy activated the image inducer his doppelganger had kept stored in the glove compartment; it gave him the image of a humanoid appearance, and hid his prisoner completely: Now any observer would see only a heavy-set bespectacled man alone and driving a Jeep.

Dr. Henry McCoy wearily sat up on the stone floor and pulled the tin bowl closer. No food, of course, but someone--probably one of his captor's many flunkies--had put some water in it, he hoped. Hank lifted the bowl and sniffed cautiously at it. No water--someone had pissed in his bowl.

Snorting, he pushed the bowl away. This sort of nuisance was no surprise here in McCoy's private hell. In the long months Hank had been imprisoned here, he'd been nearly starved to death. His fur was dull and thin, with worn bald patches that widened every day. He'd lived as an animal, been treated like an animal, but he refused to give in to the bestial side of his nature. He stubbornly spent his hours mentally going over his work as a biochemist, remembering the good times he'd had with his friends--anything but the reality of being made to eat scraps out of a bowl on the floor, usually with his hands bound so that he had to put his face in the bowl and lap up the rare bits of food like a dog. His captor hated him bitterly; Hank knew that with cold certainty--yet, McCoy hadn't been able to bring himself to kill him. Yet. Hank knew better than to presume there was any good in McCoy--whatever reason he had for keeping his twin alive, it couldn't be from any human or inhuman kindness.

A clatter brought several of McCoy's stooges to their feet, including Havok and Fatale, who had been sleeping on the floor while waiting for their master to return. They made Hank sad, especially Havok; he hoped against hope that Scott would never find out about Alex, because Havok couldn't have been turned if that spark of evil hadn't existed all along deep down in the core of his soul. To see Alex like this would break Scott's heart.

McCoy came through the opening into the lab, carrying someone across his shoulders. Hank got a glimpse of a lean masculine frame swaddled loosely in a white cotton robe, of a heavy mop of reddish brown hair. At first he feared that the newcomer was indeed Scott Summers, then as McCoy turned and Hank saw the length of that hair, he was not comforted by the realization that McCoy had brought Gambit into his lair. Like Cyclops' mutant abilities, Gambit's powers were potentially lethal in close quarters--and in spite of his misery, Hank had no desire to be blasted and buried in an explosion of kinetic energy. He wondered if McCoy knew exactly how dangerous this captive was.

The question was answered for him as McCoy trundled out a gurney that he had clearly designed especially for this victim, and began securing him to it with built-in metal clamps: It formed roughly the shape of an X, with Remy's arms and legs separated; the leaves of the table ended at his wrists and ankles, extending his hands and feet out and unable to touch anything at all, not even to bend freely.

Hank felt a renewed sense of outrage. He liked the Cajun, a great deal. After all, when one is covered with blue fur, one doesn't exactly have to worry overmuch about competition for the ladies from a man so handsome that people stop in the streets to stare at him as he saunters past. Thus, friendships can be formed. Besides, Hank half-envied Remy the joie de vivre of his personality; this is not to say that he resented him in any way for it--but he enjoyed looking out the windows of his laboratory on sunny afternoons to watch Remy tearing around on his motorcycle, just riding to feel the wind rushing through all that hair. It had once occurred to Hank that if Remy possessed wings like Warren's, he'd probably never come back to alight.

And now to see that free-spirited friend bolted into cold metal cuffs, Hank felt ill. He feared even more for Remy than he did for himself.

Those fears mushroomed a thousand-fold when he heard a coarse, oily voice exclaim, "Fer ME? Ahya shou't've."

The Sugar Man ambulated out of the shadows and approached the table. Thick ropes of drool hung from his massive jaws as one of his tongues snaked out and flicked the hem of the robe over Remy's thigh. A second and a third tongue coiled their ways around the Cajun's waist and lower leg.

"Not yet, you contemptible cretin," McCoy bellowed over his shoulder. He was squatting on his haunches, rooting about in a large locker full of assorted mechanical equipment.

"ButI'm starvin'!"

"This one doesn't have enough meat on his bones for you, Sugar Man."

"Phooey. How 'bout fer dessert? Tasty lil' morsel--"

"You are not going to eat him, Sugar Man. You are going to take good care of him for me."

"Huh."

"Be quiet, you troll--you'll wake him before I'm ready. Egad, you even salivate loud enough to wake the dead."

"Sowhat?"

"Soooooooooooo . . . you don't want him frightened of his Uncle Sugar Man, do you?"

"Don'tcare. Got any ketchup?"

"Sugar Man, if you want to consume a biped for breakfast, help yourself to that hideous furry one in the corner."

"Want th' kiddie. I likes 'em young, remember?"

"Well, you can't have him. Go eat Havok or something." McCoy continued to dig around in the locker, tossing assorted small contraptions over his shoulder. His mood was becoming more bellicose by the minute.

"I haftatake care o' th' kiddie?"

"Yes, consider him your pet--your trinket, if you will. You must watch him carefully to ensure that he (a) does not escape from us, and (b) stays alive and relatively healthy."

"So whassabigdeal?"

"This one belongs to Sinister."

Ah, but THAT caught Sugar Man's attention. He backed away from the unconscious X-Man, seriously impressed. McCoy had actually stolen one of Mr. Sinister's chicks out from under his cold metal wing? That took some stones. "Uh--does Sinister knowhe's gone?"

McCoy hadn't thought about that.

What a troubling notion.

Then, as he thought about it, McCoy decided that Sinister would have no reason to suspect that LeBeau was anywhere but with his friends, if he was even that interested in Gambit's whereabouts for the time being. And if Sinister valued the Cajun at all for whatever his reasons, he might think twice before endangering him in his current situation. This was even better.

Finally, McCoy found what he was looking for. He stalked back to the gurney, pushed Sugar Man aside, and fitted a thick circle of metal around the Cajun's neck.

Sugar Man squawked, half in pain and half in surprise. One moment he was enjoying the hollows of that tender young throat--in the next, one of his tongues had gotten caught in the locking mechanism of the collar when its hinges flattened. "'Ou cu'off par' 'o' my 'ongue, 'ou ass'ole!"

"You've got a dozen more tongues where that one came from."

Coiling the wounded tongue back into his mouth to nurse, Sugar Man said, "Whas'sat?"

"A handy-dandy Genoshan slave collar, my freakish friend. This brat is much more dangerous than he appears."

"'Nother mutant, s'all, right? Why collar 'im and not that big mangy thing in th'corner?"

"Because the Beast can't charge up the surface he is lying on and explode our lair." McCoy enjoyed referring to his doppelganger as a Beast. Havok, Fatale, Sugar Man, and the rest of McCoy's tunnel denizens knew better than to refer to McCoy as the Beast or the Black Beast. At least to his face. "Now," he said, "where is my flabby friend?"

"Righthere."

"No, not you, Sugar Man. My other ugly little friend. The one who lives under the floor."

"Theone you showedme?"

"One and the same. Now, if you'll be kind enough to haul it up here, I'll get our latest guest ready for a little show and tell session."

From his corner, Hank watched, half in horror and half in fascination, as Sugar Man dragged a chained polymorphic monstrosity from the trapdoor below the flooring. McCoy saw his interest and said, "You're wondering what this thing is, aren't you, Beast? I call it Serendipity, because that is how I created it, and how I learned its talents. I'm not sure exactly what it is, but it can filter every thought, every image from the mind of yon Cajun lamb, and translate those ambient psyonic thoughtwaves into digital resource data for my computers. All of you X-Men have wondered from time to time what this junior kleptomaniac is hiding--and you KNOW he's hiding SOMETHING, but been too polite to invade his privacy. Aren't you the mannerly crew? Well, I'm not such a gentleman, Beast. I want to know what's up between secretive young Gambit here and someone we all know and love: Mr. Sinister himself. You've sensed it, too, haven't you, Beast--some sort of connection between them--and you've been too much a dullard to act upon it. Well, this is the temple of truth, Beast, and it's time to kneel at the altar. Yes, it's high time for Gambit's confessional."

The beautiful woman sitting beside him at the theater took his hand and pushed it into the fur muff she was holding on her lap. "Your hands are cold, handsome," she said. "Why is that?"

Remy LeBeau turned to his new ladyfriend and smiled brightly enough to melt the polar ice caps. "I just cold-natured. Must mean my heart is warm, neh?" He was not at all inclined to confide in this woman that his ability to throw a kinetic charge also robbed him of his body temperature, necessitating his wearing a coat much of the time. As heat always travels from a warmer to a colder object, so did his body heat--unless he happened to be charging up something intrinsically warmer than his own 98.6 degrees, then he would absorb its warmth. His date tonight was attractive enough, but he'd picked her up at a local nightspot, taken her up on her offer of a free ticket to a musical, and was beginning to hope that she wouldn't invite him in after he walked her home. And of course he had to walk her home: Deep down under his thief's soul lurked the heart of a southern gentleman; he could no more leave her unescorted than he could steal back his own warmth. But the muff--something she said she had inherited from her grandmother--felt good to his chilled fingers, as did her hand chafing his.

The musical was mildly enjoyable to him. "Phantom of the Opera", or so it was called, seemed quite lavishly costumed and performed, the songs were entertaining, but Remy wasn't one to sit still in one spot for long. It was his nature to always be doing something; his hands as well as his eyes needed to be busy. So he slipped his other hand into the muff and began to play handsie games with his date while the cast performed the "Don Juan Triumphant" number.

"REMY LEBEAU!!!!!!"

Huh? How did his name find its way into a Broadway musical?

"I KNOW YOU'RE HERE, LEBEAU!!!!!!"

He realized then that it wasn't the Phantom of the Opera calling out his name, but a giant of a man standing unmasked on the stage. The man was nearly bald, but for a long blond, surprisingly-thick ponytail gathered atop his head. He wasn't a member of the cast, and Remy wasn't quite sure how he'd gotten on the stage without being noticed.

The music stopped. Confused, the actors began to back away from the man. But he caught one of them--the young woman with the title role of Christine--about the throat and lifted her off her feet. She began to gasp for breath, futilely clawing at his grip with her fingernails, her feet helplessly kicking the air. "I HAVE BUSINESS WITH YOU, LEBEAU!!!!!" roared the man.

"S'all right, chere. Don' worry." Remy whispered, patting his date's arm to reassure her, then stepped into the aisle.

"You say you 'ave business with Remy LeBeau, mon ami?" he spoke loudly to the ponytailed giant. "Here I be. Dere is no need to bother de young lady. Les' go outside and leave dese people to enjoy their evening, no?"

"It's just your way to settle things in the alley, isn't it, LeBeau?"

Remy shrugged. The man's posture and voice were threatening; he could sense the panic rising all around him from the other people in the theater; and he smelled a fight coming. But first things first: One way or the other, he had to separate this man from these innocents, starting with the woman turning blue in his grasp.

"You 'ave me at a disadvantage, sir. I do not know your name."

"So . . . Candra never mentioned Gideon to you?"

Gideon.

Remy had heard legends of this External, and Candra once casually mentioned an ex-lover named Gideon, but he hadn't associated the two together.

Until now.

"M'sieur Gideon, I must ask you to release de young lady."

For answer, Gideon suddenly tightened his hold, almost strangling the woman. "Let's see you make me--punk."

There was no time to rush him head-to-head; the woman was nearly unconsciousness. Nothing for it but to use his mutant powers in this crowded theater.

In less than a second, Gambit had charged and thrown a pair of playing cards directly at Gideon's chest. If this man was indeed an External, he couldn't kill him with his kinetic charge, but with a little luck, he could make him drop the woman.

Remy allowed himself a grin when Gideon staggered back a few steps in the concussive force in the cards, and lost his grip on the woman's neck. She fell to the stage floor, gasping and coughing, and began to crawl away from her assailant. However, the explosion was enough to send the theatergoers into a panic: They scrambled out of their seats, over a thousand people, and began milling toward the exits in a literal stampede. It was all Remy could do to keep his footing and avoid being trampled.

Gideon recovered quickly. He righted himself, then boomed at Remy. "That was pathetic, boy. And Candra told me you'd spoiled her for other men. She didn't want me anymore--said no one else could compare to you. I wish she could see you now, boy." He spoke louder, so that his voice carried over the din of the fleeing audience. "Didn't she tell you that I can template the powers of others? I can take your pitiful little kinetic abilities and direct them back at you--LIKE THIS!"

The blast caved in the floor Remy was standing on; he caught the armrest of the last chair of the aisle of seats to avoid falling into the theater basement. Other people standing near him, including his date, weren't so fortunate: They went crashing into the next lower level, and Remy could hear the sound of their bones breaking above the screams and other sounds of terror.

This infuriated Remy. He shook his free fist at Gideon, hoping to goad him into focusing the fight on him instead of involving the other individuals in the theater. "Jus' like an External!" he sneered. "Don' care 'bout nothing but your own wounded ego! Go on, stand up dere like Moses--or be half de man you claim you be and settle dis wit' me one on one!"

This amused Gideon greatly. "But don't you SEE, boy? It's WORSE for you this way--to watch these humans decimated in your name, with your own powers and with your name on your breaths if they survive--your presence amongst the humans is no secret now, puppy. HEAR ME, MAGGOTS! Those of you who survive this night--remember the name of Remy LeBeau--thief, mutant, and murderer!"

Remy felt ill. The witnesses would remember his name when the authorities questioned them.

Another explosion brought down most of the roof. Struck by a glancing ceiling beam, Remy lost his balance and fell to his knees. Several score of people were headed his way, screaming and running like blind bulls. He tried to right himself, tried to protect his head and his vitals, but the crowd was beyond reason, and he fell beneath their feet. If he could have stayed vertical, perhaps he could have used his natural agility or charmed his way to safety, but Gideon was keeping him off-balance with one kinetic blast after another. His only other recourse was to clear a way for himself using his ability to charge and explode inanimate objects, but that would greatly multiply the mortality in this fracas. The last thing he remembered was the sound of Gideon's baritone, laughing and laughing.

"Do not try to move or talk. You have massive internal injuries."

A medic had found him, half-buried under the wreckage that used to be the Zenith Theater. Remy felt arms slide under his shoulders and knees, effortlessly lifting him free of the debris. "You one strong homme . . ." he started to whisper, but speaking those few words took all the strength he had. The medic was right; Remy knew that he was hurt inside--he could smell his own blood soaking his clothing, and even the slightest movement was painful enough to make him scream if he'd had the throat and lungs for it.

"I be dyin'--"

"You will not die."

There were other people trapped in the ruin, beseeching help and moaning, but Remy's rescuer took no notice of them. Sirens wailed in the distance, heading closer, but the medic seemed utterly unconcerned about anything except the wounded Cajun. He cradled Gambit carefully, as if he knew exactly where and how severe the internal injuries were, and how to avoid wrong moves that would exacerbate those injuries.

"What 'bout de others?"

The medic ignored him and walked out of the collapsed theater and into the watery light of a street lamp.

Remy squinted--and found himself looking up at an expressionless face that seemed to be fashioned of metal. The medic's skin was shiny, like chrome or steel, but his features didn't appear to be rigid and fixed as a robot's would. He spoke to Remy again--in a voice too low for the Cajun to hear, and his thin black lips parted to reveal twin rows of jagged fangs. Feeling Remy flinch in his arms, he said, "You need not be afraid. I mean you no harm. Be still, now. I assure you that you will not wish to be found by the police after what has transpired here, and you must have care for your injuries."

The gentle hiss of oxygen flowing into the mask fitted over his nose and mouth was the first inkling Remy had of his new surroundings. He must have fainted, he realized, and who could blame him? With some effort, he managed to lift his head a little and focus on the room in which he found himself.

'Dis one crazy hospital . . . '

For starters, there was no decoration whatsoever. No pictures on the walls, nothing but six solid walls of machinery--various computerized banks of modern technology covered the four walls, the ceiling, even the surface upon which Remy was lying. What was left of hisclothing after the explosion in the theater was gone, and there were enough tubes and needles in him to account for every orifice and pore he'd ever thought he had, and a few more besides. He could see tens of monitors recording his every breath, heartbeat, and nerve impulse throughout his body. Remy tried to move, but couldn't; even if he'd had the strength, the restraints were done too well.

Then the weird medic was back, standing at his side, gazing at him as though he were an ant farm. "You should not be awake," was the only assessment of his condition he received. Remy felt something icy cold moving up the large vein in his left arm, and again he lost consciousness.

When he came to, Remy felt like a bear who'd been hibernating in a cave all winter, sluggish and weak. He instantly realized that his body had done some major healing, the broken feeling was gone, and he was no longer restrained, but lying in a real bed, warmly covered with real blankets. This room was plainly furnished, with only the bed in it. The walls, his gown, and bedcovers were stark monochromatic white. He wasn't surprised that no one had sent him flowers. Again, there were no pictures on the walls, no windows.

Remy pushed himself out of the bed--and promptly fell in a heap on the metal floor; his legs were too weakened by inactivity to support him. He touched his own torso, and was shocked at the prominence of his rib cage against his skin. He'd always been underweight, but never so much as now; his 6'1" frame seemed little more than flesh stretched over bones. He must have been unconscious for weeks.

He knotted his thin fingers into the blankets and attempted to charge the cloth with his kinetic mutant power, but all his will resulted in only a slight crackling, followed by a smoky snap that only burned a tiny hole in his blanket. Remy let out his breath with a long sigh; he was too weak to walk, couldn't even summon a charge. But at least his internal organs no longer felt as though they were surrounded by shards of broken glass inside him--he must have come within an inch of dying.

After a few hours of lying on the cold floor, Remy realized that he had to get back into bed: He'd started shivering, his chest was beginning to tighten, and he wasn't strong enough to fight a pneumonia. He grasped the bedcovers again, trying to climb up them and onto the mattress, but succeeded only in pulling all the bedding off the bed and on top of him. Frustrated beyond measure, he cried out, slamming his left fist against the floor. Ordinarily, this would have only caused a sore hand, but his wrist--with its starved, thinning small bones--broke; rather, it felt as though it had shattered into powder. The pain tore away his tenuous clawhold on consciousness and Remy thought he was falling into a deep black chasm, and that taloned hands reached from the rock walls to clutch at him as he fell.

Gambit opened his eyes. He was lying curled on his right side atop a high steel table, his left arm in a heavy cast that appeared to be constructed of some sort of semi-soft white metal, versus the usual plaster. He made a quick check of his situation: Someone had slipped a tie-front cotton gown onto him without bothering to close it, and loosely belted a warm robe over that; otherwise, he was nude.

The room around him was huge and cavernous, and it hummed with activity. Computers, maps, monitors; rows of white-coated men crowded around laboratory benches, consoles; more of them walked across catwalks to further levels of equipment, studying their charts, marking their maps. As with all else he had seen since his arrival, the surroundings were devoid of any sort of embellishment. There were other uniformed men standing at the doorways--obviously guards of some sort.

And in the midst of the scientific hive strode the medic who had rescued Remy at the theater--but he couldn't be mistaken for a stretcher-bearer now: His metallic skin gleamed white in the starkhalogen lighting, and he walked, much taller than any of them, with utter confidence and authority. This was HIS domain, Remy instinctively understood that; he was lord and master here--the scientists all deferred to him as he passed. Heck, they virtually genuflected when he spoke to them, making those little half-bows and never looking directly at his eyes.

Then Remy felt hands close about his shoulders, turning him over onto his back. He found himself looking at another bespectacled, lab-coated man. This man, clearly a flunky, called out, "He's awake, Mr. --"

"Essex."

The tall man cut off with a word whatever the stooge was about to say. He approached the table, his cold eyes appraising Remy. "How long has he been conscious?"

"Only just now, Mr.--Essex. I've been watching him the whole time, just as you told me to. I haven't let him fall or get hurt again, please, may I go back to my--"

"Go."

The scientist scuttled away, leaving the way clear for Essex come stand beside Remy. "I apologize for the discomfort of your current bed, but your accident has demonstrated that you cannot be left alone," he gestured at the casted wrist, "until other arrangements are made."

Remy tried to speak, and it felt as though he was only beginning to learn to talk after years of silence. "What kind 'a hospital is dis?" he croaked.

"I could not take you to a hospital, given the fact that you are still wanted by the police in the matter of the Zenith Theater destruction. This is my laboratory."

"You a--doctor?"

"Yes." Essex read the unspoken question in Remy's eyes and said, "You have been my guest for some three months now. Your injuries were critical."

"Need t' call my father, my brother--"

"As your physician, I have felt it prudent to keep you quiet and resting."

"Wan' t' go home--"

"Not for some time to come, I fear." Essex began unknotting Remy's robe, frowning as Remy reflexively tried to keep it closed. "There is no need to be shy, I assure you. I must know every detail of your progress toward a level of recovery acceptable to both of us."

He pried Remy's fingers away from the belt as easily as he would an infant's, pinning the free wrist to the tabletop with one metallic hand, untying and opening the robe with the other. "Be still," he commanded.

To his surprise, Remy found himself obeying, quieting as Essex released his wrist, but feeling like a butterfly pinned to a board. Several of the scientists drifted over and stared intently at him. Remy sincerely hoped that they weren't planning a gangbang; he didn't have the strength to fight off even the puniest of them--let alone the big guy. But Essex's hands moved clinically over his body, and there was no sign of smarmy attention from the strange doctor. When the touches became more intimate and probing--but no less cold, Remy caught his breath and recoiled away from Essex.

One of the scientists, who had been been wearing an anxious look on his bearded face, said, "But he's so young, Essex--barely more than a boy."

"Ah, but do you not see, Doctor Veitch--he is at the perfect age; he is in his prime. He will never be more ready for this than he is now. Are you suggesting that I wait? For what? For him to shed his innocence slowly with the years? If not for my genius, he should be dead months ago. And have a care how you speak to me. Remember who I am."

"I--I wasn't questioning your goals, sir. I just felt pity for him."

The low voice was without emotion. "You are dismissed from my service, Veitch--and that of science. I have neither the time or the interest to entertain your sniveling."

Essex turned his attention back to Remy. "It is an old Chinese proverb that if one saves a life, that life belongs to him forever. Your life belongs to me. You belong to me. Not to any geneticist or statistician in my employ, but to me alone. I need something from you, Remy LeBeau. Give it to me and I will release you in safety. Refuse me and I shall take what I will from you and damn the consequences to your mind and body."

Remy had been watching and listening long enough. His instincts were never wrong, and at the moment, they were telling him that this "doctor" was a dangerous man. Well, he was glad that Essex had ceased any pretense to the contrary, and laid his cards on the table. One always needs to know who his enemies are. Clearly, Essex hadn't nursed Remy back from the brink of death out of the goodness of his heart. "So Gambit a prisoner, neh?"

"Only if you choose to insist that you are. After all, your health is broken and your mutant powers with it. You are still in extreme need of skilled medical care, and you remain a fugitive from the law in the world outside my laboratory. Cooperate, and you shall have safe conduct home."

"What you wan' den, homme?" Even speaking a few sentences was exhausting for Remy. For all the menacing talk, Essex was quite correct: Remy was in no condition to attempt an escape, now that he'd been informed that he was a captive--and Essex knew it, too. He cast about for any strategy that would save him while he was at such a disadvantage. Something down in the marrow of his bones told him that Essex was just as easily capable of killing him as he was of saving his life, if it suited his purposes more. Remy knew that he had to rebuild some of his strength before defying Essex. Even though he hated the idea with all the natural rebelliousness in his soul, he had to play along. For now.

"I am a geneticist, Remy LeBeau, and so are most of the individuals here in my employ. While studying epithelial cells from your wound tissues, I have discovered that there are certain factors in the cross-linkages of your DNA molecules which are of value to me in my research, and due to specific isometric considerations, I have no means of synthesizing those factors in the laboratory: I must obtain them directly from you."

"You sayin' you mean t' skin me?"

"Not at all. Merely that I will need a supply of meiotic cells from you."

"I can speak French or English, mon ami--or German, Russian, or Spanish. But Gambit not understand your language."

"I require reproductive cells for my research. Sperm, if you will."

Remy managed a weak laugh. "If dat all you need, jus' give ol' Remy LeBeau a Dixie cup and a magazine. I fill de cup for you, you let me go, oui?"

"I fear that I shall need much more material from you than that. I shall need as much as you can stand to provide. And I must have those fluids under controlled conditions, so you see, your offer is negligible compared to my needs."

"Controlled conditions?" Remy could no more than whisper.

This sounded scarier all the time.

"Exactly," Essex continued. "The material must be first be obtained with the goal of maximizing the size of the harvest, then it must be immediately preserved in buffer electrolyte solutions at appropriate temperatures and nutrient content to keep the live sperm optimally viable. I have the technology to accomplish this. However, I do require a certain modicum of cooperation from you--struggling will produce an adverse effect upon the chromosomal spatial arrangements. I am prepared to take the genetic material from you by force--and I will if you refuse me--but the most advantageous scenario for both of us would be for you to be an agreeable participant in the harvest: I will achieve the better yield in terms of quality and quantity of semen, and you will spare yourself a great deal of pain."

He opened the robe again and said, "You really have no choice, boy. Your health is quite fragile, and I assure you that there is more than one obstacle to leaving this complex alive even if you were well and in full possession of your destructive mutant abilities. As it is, I am offering you the chance to recover your strength and gain your freedom with a minimum of discomfort. Come now--you are not a noble soul who would suffer stoically for the principle of a thing; you are a petty criminal, and your self-survival will always be your first priority. We both know it, do we not, little thief?"

Remy hated to admit it, but Essex was right: He didn't have a masochistic bone in his lanky young body, and he seemed to have no way--yet--of avoiding what Essex planned for him. He tried to reason his way out of it. "But, homme, you say Gambit need his strength, yet you talk 'bout drainin' it all away. What be de good of dat?" Essex suddenly lifted Remy's shoulders so that he was half-sitting up, holding the rim of a bowl to his lips so that he could sip the viscous contents. "Drink this, Remy LeBeau. It is a nutrient and spermatogenic compound designed to maintain your strength--in all respects--and it is the only food I will permit you during your stay with me. There are also certain medications present--sedatives and analgesics, if you will--to eliminate the anxiety and pain factors of the procedure. As I said previously, inflicting physical suffering upon you will be detrimental to my experiments. Drink it down, boy. Drink it now."

Well, if Essex had wanted to kill him, he'd had plenty of chances long before now. Remy closed his eyes and gulped the bitter fluid. He was vaguely aware of Essex' hand sliding under his chin, tilting his face back so that less spillage would occur. Later he tried to shove the bowl away, but it was pressed against his lips with bruising force, its warm contents sliding down his gullet--while Essex stroked his throat to force him to swallow, whether he wanted to or not.

Hours later, Remy cracked open one eye, then the other. He was back in bed--but this time, it was a different bed with high bedrails locked in place to prevent further falls like the one that had broken his wrist; this must be the "other arrangements" Essex had mentioned. His robe was hanging on a wall hook near the door. Remy checked under the blankets: He was wearing a fresh gown, which nobody had bothered to close. His skin felt clean; someone had bathed him, washed his hair, and he'd never regained consciousness even for that.

Which was a bothersome thought. Not that it was the only one. Remy vaguely remembered brief moments of the "harvest"--horrifying enough that he shrank away from the thought--and decided that the drugs were his friends: He couldn't have weathered the procedure without the sedatives that made him sweetly drowsy while his body was not his own. Remy had some hazy recollections of the technology Essex had used, and it made his blood run cold when he tried to think about it--so he didn't. The best analogy he could come up with was that he'd been ravished by a computer. His groin was sore and painful, as were his nipples and prostate gland; he recalled the use of weak electrodes to stimulate his erogenous areas, as well as a neutral electrode taped to his right foot to ground him. If his body ached this much when he'd been given pain-killers, what would it be like without them? He remembered another roomful of technology, but these machines were somehow more frightening, more sinister, and he couldn't recall exactly why. Something had terrified him--what, he didn't know--and he couldn't have endured it without the drugs.

He had to escape. It was that simple. He'd never been anyone's pawn, and he didn't intend to start now. Snuggling a little deeper into the blankets for warmth, Remy pondered his options. There were few, at this point. He was a pragmatist, and he had to admit that escape was hopeless now when he was barely able to sit up and lacked the strength to walk, let alone summon his mutant powers. There would be no help from any of Essex's employees; the only one who had disagreed with him hadn't been seen again. Remy had to accept whatever food Essex was willing to give him, he had to play along long enough to recover some wherewithal to make his break.

And he found that he hated himself for it. As the days and weeks dragged on, his strength barely improved and even that was being sapped by Essex's constant demands for "genetic material". His requests for food other than the nutrient suspension were ignored. Lately, he had begun striving to extend the periods during which he was able to remain on his feet, even to walk about his room--Essex had not encouraged this, and although they had not discussed it, Remy felt it safe to take this mild exercise only when he was alone, afraid of being caught at it. The knowledge that he was a captive grated on his nerves; worse, he was cooperating with a particularly painful and degrading violation. He longed for the courage to defy Essex, to throw his bowl of bitter milk back in his austere face--or, even better, to charge up the bowl with his kinetic abilities and blow Essex's head off his shoulders. He thought about that a lot, but when push came to shove, all he could do was accept what he was given and bide his time.

As time went on, Remy's physical health began to improve, little by little. He could barely walk, and only with holding on for dear life to whatever surfaces he could seize for support--but Essex allowed him to more or less roam about as he would within the confines of the lair.

The strange man had reason for confidence, Remy was to learn. The laboratory complex was a huge, labrynthine network of corridors, more laboratories, and especially locked chambers. He got turned around and lost whenever he tried to make sense of the layout, which seemed to change with each foray he made into it, and would remain lost until Essex inevitably sent the guards to fetch him for more "harvesting".

One day Remy was feeling particularly fretful. He had a case of cabin fever the size of Lake Pontchartrain, and a temper to match. He'd given up wasting his cursing and sarcasm on Essex; the man didn't care if he was smiling or sniping, and Remy was beginning to hope that if he feigned acceptance of his situation, Essex would eventually let down his guard enough to make feasible a break for freedom on Remy's part. And Remy knew well that one chance was all he would get--if he was lucky. He'd been secretly collecting bits of metal to use as lockpicks, hiding them under his mattress until he went out of his room, then he would slip them into the hem of his gown or robe (he'd been given no underclothes since his imprisonment, even though he had asked for them). Essex never searched him for contraband. Remy hoped it was due to a case of underestimation of his abilities at breaking and entering, rather than a surety of the hopelessness of Remy's chances for escape.

Remy had seen some increased comings and goings recently at a certain locked chamber of the lab complex, so it seemed as good a place as any to start practicing for his jailbreak. He waited until one night (he thought it was night in his windowless environment; there were certain periods during which the scientists were not in evidence, and since they seemed human, Remy assumed that they had to sleep sometime. Essex himself appeared to be completely without fatigue; he was always working in the lab, "day or night"; Remy had never seen any sign at all that he ever slept), and went to jimmy that inviting room's lock--just to see if he could.

As he slipped down the hallways, silent as a cat in spite of his weakened limbs, he saw Essex poring over some computer data. The mysterious scientist was, as always, wearing full armor with that spiky cape; it didn't look like a comfortable suit, but Essex never seemed distracted from his work. He didn't glance in Remy's direction when he said, "Are you warm enough, Remy LeBeau?"

"Yah." The fewer words he said to Essex, the better. It annoyed him that his captor was so aware of his whereabouts.

"I recommend that you return to your room and sleep. I will have need of you shortly."

For answer, Remy only snorted and darted away. Even his acute senses couldn't detect the sound of his own footfalls--so how could Essex? He stole a glance over his shoulder: Essex hadn't followed him. Exhilarated by the opportunity to take some steps--however small--in his own behalf, Remy knelt by the forbidden door, removed a sliver of metalfrom the hem of his robe, and breathlessly inserted it into the locking mechanism. He was rewarded less than a minute later by the hiss of hydraulic hinges being released, and the door slid open for him.

Remy crept inside, not daring to fumble for the lights. After a moment, he didn't need them, anyway; his crimson eyes were photosensitive, and his night vision was just as good as his daytime sight--the only problem was that his eyes tended to glow in the dark, and even that had been to his advantage on more than one rare occasion--when he'd been interrupted during a heist, the interlopers had thought there was a wild red-eyed animal mysteriously in their treasure vault--and promptly fled while he made his exit.

The room was enormous, cavernous.

And it was filled with hundreds of cylindrical glass tubes, in additional to the usual banks of contentedly humming computers and other machinery. Remy hesitantly reached out to touch one of the cylinders, and found it cold and frosty to the touch. Rubbing away a patch of frost with the elbow of his robe, Remy peered into the tube--

And promptly lost his "dinner" onto the metal floor.

There was something alive in that tube.

Something taller and heavier than a man, but with gnarled, shrunken limbs, a gaping maw of a mouth filled with rows and rows of sharp jagged teeth. Its head was crowned with a mop of auburn hair, and its red eyes stared unseeing as it floated in a thick, translucent media that looked frighteningly familiar, its protruding belly moving in and out as it breathed the milk it floated in.

Clutching his stomach against more heaves, Remy staggered away from the incubating monster, bumping into another cylinder. Unable to control his curiosity, he scraped away the frost and found himself staring at a female abomination, the sister of the first he had seen--but this one was beautiful. She was slim, with delicate facial features, beautiful in spite of her baldness--and glazed red eyes. The palms of her hands had structures on them that looked like mouths, and these opened and closed like gills, fluttering in the flow of the embryonic milk.

A third tube boasted more heavily reinforced walls than the previous two. It contained a young man who might have been Remy's twin, but this one crackled with electrical power rather than kinetic charges, sending sparks of lightning through the cylinder like an electric eel.

This confirmed Remy's worst fears.

He sank to the floor, curling up in a shivering ball, and began to cry, helplessly and uncontrollably. He felt as though he'd been trampled all over again, his guts twisting and revolting. And he knew--he knew because he still had his empathic abilities and could feel the very rot in the hearts of these soulless beings--that these creatures were infused with not only his own blood--but the evil of Essex, as well. They were vile things, monsters, and there wasn't a shred of rightness in them. Remy had never exactly prided himself on his virtues, but he'd never meant harm to anyone. These warped creatures had no good in them.

And left to live, they would bring no good to the world, either.

Remy knew that as surely as he'd ever known anything in his life.

They had to die--before Essex could release them.

And release them he would, to do his bidding and further his aims.

Remy hadn't attempted to use his kinetic powers in a long time, trying to conserve them for his escape, but there was nothing for it but to bring them to bear now--and pray he had power enough to finish the job. He would charge up the entire room, and kill all of them. He hated all of them on sight; he knew what they were, and they stood in opposition to every hope and aspiration he'd ever had.

Especially his most precious dream--

The dream for which he was willing to give his last breath.

Redemption.

Essex didn't know Remy LeBeau as well as he thought

(Remy's hands begin to glow)

The tallow-faced devil

(He brings his hands to face level, gauging the strength of the building charge)

See how he likes it when he finds his hatchlings

(The charge is reluctant--his body knows how much expending the energy will cost him)

A flash of crimson raced back and forth between his hands, lighting the room, ready to be unleashed. But Remy held it back, ignoring the perspiration beading his forehead as he exerted the most infinite control over his powers, forming a nimbus of kinetic pulse around his body. Maybe, if he was the luckiest he'd ever been in his life, he could survive in spite of the odds by reabsorbing a single molecule of power just as he released it: That kind of strain would split the molecule, and raise the force of the ensuing explosion by a thousand-fold. Not only would he kill these grostequeries, he'd blow out the entire north face of the lab complex while he was at it, and with some spectacular good fortune the interface would protect him from the explosion and throw him free of the blast.

(He closes his eyes)

He'd never exercised this kind of control, but his situation had never been this lousy. His empathic powers were not, in fact, a separate manifestation of his mutant genes--but an extension of his natural sensitivity, like a cat's whiskers.

(His red gaze settles upon that one molecule of kinetic power, he sees it, floating in its electron cloud, through the multiple systems of lenses and filters that compose his mutant eyes. It's pulsating with power, fighting to be loosed with its billions of neighboring kinetic molecules)

Spreading his arms wide, Remy let them go

All but one.

(He seizes it)

His head fell back

(But they're ALIVE)

"Forgive me," he whispered to no one, except perhaps himself.

As all that power rushed back into his body like water filling a balloon

And he wondered whom he heard, screaming in the distance with a voice that sounded so much like his own.

Remy had no idea how long he lay there, trying to make sense of what he'd done--or rather, failed to do, but there was no rationalizing it. After an eternity, he was able to open his eyes--

And found another pair of red eyes above him, glaring into his.

Essex.

Of course.

"You could not go through with it, could you?" he asked calmly.

"I--I be th' daddy a' all dese t'ings . . ." Remy sobbed.

"Yes," said Essex. "That you are."

"Why you stop me?"

"I did not stop you, little thief. I needed take no action at all. In the end, you could not bring yourself to destroy our misbegotten creations, for you are not a killer. I have always known it. Why do you think I allowed you the run of my laboratory complex? Even if you were strong enough to throw a kinetic charge, you could not kill my employees any more than you could kill these children of your loins."

He picked Remy up in his arms and began to walk back to the rooms from which they had come. Remy didn't struggle at all; he had nothing left to fight with--absorbing his own powers had temporarily fried most of his nervous system. All the while, Essex spoke to him in that low matter-of-fact voice of his. "You will be pleased to know that your indenturedness to me is nearly at an end--for now. Yes, Remy LeBeau, your release is at hand. I am a man of my word, after all." He looked down at Remy, almost smiling at the wary expression in the scarlet eyes "You wonder if I intend to kill you, as a form of "release". You need not fear for your life at my hands. Although I have nearly completed my initial series of experiments upon your genetic material; that is, the union of your sperm with artificial and human ova--it is incumbent upon me to examine the results of splicing your meiotic cells with those of other mutants. Your unique stabilizing factor has made possible a degree of cloning precision that had so far eluded me. For example, I can insert certain chromosomes into your meiotic cells, and vice versa--utilizing this stabilizing factor and premapped genetic strains to produce unparalleled successes. Ergo, what is NOT possible now for the future of geneticenginee ring? We have many, many more children to father, you and I."

Remy thought he was going mad, his mind whirling about a pivot of terror. He understood what Essex was saying to him:

No freedom.

Ever again.

"Wan' my papa. Wan' Tante Mattie."

He was babbling.

He didn't care.

He was long past caring.

"Of course you want your "family"," Essex said, and his tone of voice was almost soothing. "And you shall be reunited with them, very soon. One more harvest of meiotic cells, and I will take you home. It lies within my interest and my power to do that. But I will come for you again, Remy LeBeau. Be certain of that. In the meantime; however, I wish to give you something to think about, should you harbor any inclinations toward defying me again: There will be one more harvest before I temporarily give you up, and this time, you will know what it can be like if I choose to deny you the mercy I shown in the past. I will take your meiotic cells from you without benefit of analgesia or sedation. I believe it is a lesson you will appreciate."

The true horror of that statement didn't sink into Remy's disjointed, tortured thoughts until he felt clamps close about his limbs and waist, and he actually SAW, for the first time with undrugged eyes, the apparatus with which the "harvesting" was done. It went far beyond his worst nightmares, and he renewed his fighting with a vengeance. But it was all for nothing: He was helpless--no strength to summon another kinetic charge or even attempt to overpower Essex; no way to escape, his bonds prevented any movement of his fingers and hands.

Essex let him scream, watching him all the while. It was pain beyond which Remy even had a concept of, and at some juncture the pain became agony. He was nothing but pain, incapable of resistance, bravery, nobility--anything but wretched howling and abject misery.

Yet, somewhere in the abyss of torment, Remy heard Essex speaking to him. He heard every word clearly, over his own shrieks, as though Essex inserted them directly into his brain on the edge of a scalpel. It seemed the only rational focus in his agonizing world, that voice:

"I want you to remember this, Remy LeBeau. This is what it means to cross me. And know that this is NOTHING compared to what I CAN do to you, if I so choose. See how your body betrays you--it always will, you know. You are mine forever, to do with as I will. Run to the ends of the world if you wish, but you will never be able to hide and no one can protect you--for when I choose to bring you to me, I will--and nothing shall stand in my way.

"Nothing."

"Don't try t' move, chile. I go fetch your daddy."

"Tante Mattie?" Remy focused on her broad back as the ornately carved cypress door of his own room at home closed behind her. His childhood nanny--he'd called her Mama until he was twelve.

"Come back, Tante Mattie," he muttered. "Don' go tellin' Papa anyt'ing."

Jean-Luc LeBeau was soon standing at the bedside of his adopted son. The one whom, if the truth be known, he loved more than those he'd gotten on his wives. He thought about how much he did love this young man as he studied the pain in those red eyes, and much he'd missed him during his exile. He knew what the boy needed most, and he sat down on the edge of the bed to offer that comfort. Remy was in his arms in a flash, sobbing brokenly, like a child.

The master of the Thieves' Guild held his youngest son for a long time, rocking him, silent as Remy's tears soaked the shoulder of his coat, stroking the soft red-brown hair with his free hand until his favorite calmed somewhat, then he said, "Who done 'dis, son?"

Remy bolted away from him as though scalded, backing up against his headboard. Those red eyes were feverish and tearful.

Jean-Luc tried again. He spoke gently, he'd never had cause to speak to Remy in any other fashion. "You been gone f' months, Remy. Den you jus' show up on de doorstep, naked as de day you was borned, your arm in a cast where it been broken, an' it plain somebody been at you de whole time. Your brother and cousins downstairs, dey be ready to go spill some Assassin blood. Did dat trash do dis t'you? Marius, he swear none a' his kin got you, but . . . "

Tante Mattie sat down on the other side of Remy, sliding her warm thick arm around his waist, sorrowed to the quick when he flinched. "There gonna be bad blood here, chile. Badder than it done already be. If Assassins do this, they have to answer for it. You tell your daddy the truth now."

Remy turned to her, burrowing his head against her neck. "It not be no Assassins, Papa. It--my own enemy. Nobody else's. Got nothing to do wit' de Guild. Somet'ing I have to see t'rough alone. I make someone pay for dis. But it not your fight, Papa. Tell Henri, Lapin, and de others--dat's de way it gotta be. Don' wan' talk about it. I be all right. Don' worry."

"I'll always worry 'bout you, son. Daddies jus' made dat way. But swear to me: You not lyin'? You not tryin' t' protect Belle's worthless kin f' her sake, are you? There be no retribution on de Assassins Guild if you swear t' me dey had no hand in dis."

"I swear, Papa." Remy was suddenly sleepy again; whatever nightmare--past or future--he could deal with it later. For now, he was safe--and that was all that mattered.

"I swear."

"My, how interesting." McCoy pulled the tangle of wires away from Gambit, and shoved the creature back through the trapdoor in the floor. "Who'd have thought our own swamp rat could be so useful to the cause of genetic research? You WERE holding out on us, weren't you, LeBeau?"

Gambit didn't answer him. The blindfold had been removed during the proceedings, and involuntary tears leaked slowly from his closed eyes. There was none of the cockiness Hank had always associated with him; this ordeal seemed to have utterly drained him of all strength. His eyes opened briefly, and settled on Hank's long enough to read the new knowledge in them--then closed again, miserably. Hank had seen all the pain in the world in those crimson eyes, and realized why Gambit kept his secret to himself. How he must have suffered, unable to tell even Rogue or Ororo of his constant fear and humiliation.

Now the secret was out.

McCoy bent over Gambit, then shouted, "What's this?!" He pulled the gag away from Remy's face and dropped it on the concrete floor with a heavy wet smack. "He can't stop salivating, Beast! What's wrong with him?!"

He left Remy long enough to go to Hank's corner and drag him to his feet. "Tell me what's wrong!"

A gasp and rattle startled both of them.

"My stars and garters--he's choking!" Released from the central chain that moored him to the wall, Hank rushed to the gurney. "Unlock these restraints before he aspirates!" he barked, trying to lift Remy's shoulders. "Without the gag to absorb the saliva, he's strangling on it!"

Somehow they freed Remy's wrists, and Hank sat him up, forcing a thick cloth between his teeth, bracing him against the convulsions that threatened to overwhelm him. "He's been drugged--what did you give him!?"

"Just some chloroform--" started McCoy.

"Chloroform! Why didn't you just smother him in his bed and have done with it? He's been chloroformed before, McCoy, and it nearly killed him then, too!" Forgetting his own status as a manacled prisoner and thinking only as a physician, Hank couldn't suppress his rage. "Did you forget he's not human? YOU should know that mutant reactions to medications aren't predictable! My heavens, if you were hell-bent on kidnapping him, I could have TOLD you what NOT to do!!!!! Easy, Remy--try to breathe, that's it, another breath, come on, you can do it, Remy, one more, good . . . "

Hours later, Hank was returned to his corner and chained in place. He was allowed to take Gambit with him, however, along with as many towels as he needed. Neither McCoy or Sugar Man wantedto deal with LeBeau in this condition, but Hank was almost grateful: At least he had something better to do than sit on the concrete like an ape in a zoo; he only wished it hadn't come at Remy's expense. The profusion of saliva and seizures had relented somewhat, but it had left Remy severely dehydrated and too weakened to kinetically charge anything. Hank knew of no drugs to counter the idiosyncratic reactions of the chloroform on Gambit. There was nothing for it but to keep Remy's breathing passages clear until the adverse effects passed, and eventually, they did.

Hank was dozing in his corner, holding Remy in the circle of his arms. The younger mutant had drifted into a troubled sleep some time ago, his head resting against Hank's furry chest. The Beast wished he had more to offer Gambit than the warmth of his own body, but at least he could try to stave off shock with it. All Remy had on his back was a cotton robe; Hank pushed his bare legs under his own knees, trying to warm as much of him as he could. It disturbed him that Remy wouldn't look him in the eye, nor talk to him. Hank decided not to press him for now; when they were able to speak to each other, he would reassure Remy of his confidentiality--no one else need know his secret.

Someone entered Hank's field of vision. Squinting a little, since he didn't have his glasses, Hank recognized Havok. The man who had once been Alex Summers. No one else was in the room; blessedly, McCoy and Sugar Man were absent.

Hank's heart leapt into his mouth. If he could appeal to Havok--

"Alex?" he called.

In his arms, Gambit did not awaken. Unusual, given his tendency to be a light sleeper--Hank knew that he must be exhausted beyond measure.

"Alex?" Hank repeated.

Havok walked closer, stopping when he was just out of reach (assuming Hank had any reach; chained as he was and holding Gambit, he couldn't have snagged Havok in his wildest dreams). His face seemed sharper to Hank than it used to be, crueller, so unlike Scott's that Hank wondered that they had ever been brothers. His glacial eyes raked dispassionately over the captive mutants.

"Alex," Hank tried to choose his words carefully. "You must help us. McCoy means to kill me, and I fear he plans much worse than that for Remy. You can break these chains, Alex. You can get this Genoshan collar off Remy's neck. For heavens' sake, Alex, you're ONE OF US! You don't HAVE to be afraid of McCoy, don't you see that? You can escape with us. Don't you know Scott's worried sick about you by now? Come home with us, Alex. . . please . . . "

"You can stop debasing yourself now, Beast. Your pleas are wasted on Havok." McCoy suddenly stepped out of the shadows and into the dim room light. Sugar Man slunk out from behind his partner in crime.

Hank realized that they must have been watching and listening the whole time. He looked squarely into McCoy's yellow eyes and said, "I don't believe you. Alex Summers is a good man."

"Ah, but he's not his brother. Alex Summers never has been, and never will be, the man his older brother is--nor does he wish to be. You would truly be amazed at how LITTLE effort it required to turn him. Virtually none, to tell the truth. He was always seeking to equal or better his brother, but knew all along that he never could. Why, even his genetic material is totally dissimilar from that of Scott Summers. Speaking of whom, I will be dispatching Havok after THAT one shortly. What better wolf to slip into the fold than he? I would send young Gambit with him--but if Sinister couldn't turn him, how can I? No, he shall serve me as he served Sinister; I have a fond desire to duplicate those experiments utilizing that interesting genetic stabilizer factor of his."

"You can't do that to him." Hank tried to say. "Even you can't be that cruel."

"It's not cruelty, Beast. It's science."

"I will not permit it."

McCoy tsked. "You'll be dead by then."

Sugar Man echoed him, nodding his misshapen head. "Longdead."

It was Hank's turn to be defiant; he had learned that much from Gambit's painful memories. "If you hate me so much, then why haven't you killed me instead of just droning on about it?"

McCoy's face flushed under his blue fur. "I WILL kill you, Beast. Make no mistake about it. But it will be the time and methods of my own choosing. In the meantime, you can only sit here like a lump and wonder when and how it will be. You can't even protect your friend."

Gambit's body suddenly went rigid in Hank's arms, and his scream was blood-curdling. One of Sugar Man's tongues had entwined itself about his right ankle, pulling him away from Hank. Another tongue snaked out and coiled around his left arm. Remy was terrified; his fingernails scrabbled against the concrete floor as he was dragged toward the fiend. It didn't matter how he fought; Sugar Man was like an octopus with all those arms and tongues.

"I'm afraid that my laboratory isn't yet as sophisticated as Mr. Sinister's," McCoy told Hank. "We'll just have to get a sample of Gambit's meiotic cells the old-fashioned way."

When they had finished, they tossed Gambit back in the corner with Hank. The Beast turned Remy over, putting a hand to his throat to check for a pulse. "As you have repeatedly announced your intention to kill me, I can understand your reluctance to provide nourishment for me. However, as you plan to keep Gambit alive for the your stated purposes, you will need to feed him. He was already weakened from your misadvised adventure with the chloroform, and you will find that you will have progressively less to gain if you continue to starve him."

Sugar Man said, "Strangeya should mentionthat. I got just what ittakes ta feed my baby." As Beast and a dazed Gambit looked at him incredulously, Sugar Man began removing his tunic. Then he reached for Remy, who dug his fingers into Hank's matted fur and could only whisper, "no . . . no . . . not dat . . . "

"Oh, yes, little baby--'DIS!"

Sugar Man's bare chest was covered with a multitude of small, misshapen, hairy teats, and those were on the move--as through bundles of worms writhed and flowed about in them. In spite of all that Remy and Hank had seen as X-Men, such grotesque horror was beyond their comprehension. "Come to Papa, little baby!" He'd happened upon a new torment without even knowing it, using the name Remy often referred to his own adopted father by to attach to this latest bedevilment.

Hank leapt at Sugar Man as a flurry of tongues and hands snatched Remy away from his grip and clasped him tightly against that deformed chest. But his chains brought him up short, and he collapsed, panting, only a few inches from Sugar Man, who sat contentedly, holding the desperately flailing Gambit with no effort at all. "Eat yer lunch, baby," the monster crooned. "Issall yer gonna get."

It was odious, but Hank knew that his own weakened condition was in no mean part due to being starved. He hated himself for saying it, but say it he did. "Take whatever food they're willing to give you, Remy. You've got to."

A protesting moan from the handsome head pressed against the loathesome teats.

"Take--the--food, Remy," Hank said in the strongest voice he could muster. "There's no shame in surviving."

"You heard 'im, little baby," giggled Sugar Man, guiding a hideous black nipple to Remy's mouth, trying to push it past his clenched teeth. "Go ahead, bite yer lovin' Sugar Man ifya wanna--I likes a lil' pain."

McCoy chuckled at the discomfiture of both captives. "Gambit, I heartily recommend that you listen to your hirsute friend. This is his idea. And you do want to live. That's always been your first concern, after all--saving your own skin."

Later that night, Hank attended to bandaging Remy's hands; he'd broken off most of his fingernails clawing both the floor and Sugar Man's scaly hide, trying to get away from his captors in spite of the Genoshan collar and his weakened state.

"Would you like to talk?" Hank asked, wrapping a length of gauze around Gambit's right hand.

Remy shook his head, his eyes downcast.

"We've got to free ourselves," Hank persisted.

Gambit looked up at him sharply. "An' go where, mon ami? Back to de X-Men?"

"Why, yes. Of course."

"I can't."

Hank took a deep breath. "As your doctor, I'm sworn to confidentiality."

"I know dat."

He tried to reason with Gambit, but it was useless. Remy was too busy blaming himself for circumstances beyond his control, berating himself for giving in to the wishes of those who had captured him when there was nothing else he could have done. He'd hoped that being a member of the X-Men would offer some sanctuary, but he'd been wrong about that. Gambit wasn't afraid to fight, even to the death if need be, but there was nothing in his psyche to help him deal with this. How can one resist enemies who know one's every weakness, and how to exploit it? How does one cope with a captivity that has no end in sight, and encompasses one degradation after another?

"Your kinetic powers are blocked by the Genoshan collar, but what about your charm powers?"

"Last t'ing I need 'round here be more admirers, M'sieur Henri."

Hank suppressed a smile. At last he was beginning to draw Remy into a conversation. "All right. I'll grant you that. But what of the empathic side of those abilities? According to the few studies you allowed me to perform, they aren't linked directly to your kinetic powers, and thusly may not be as affected by the Genoshan collar. If you can still use them, Jean, Betsy, and the Professor can home in on them to find us."

"Who says I wan' t' be rescued by de X-Men?"

"Would you rather stay here? Living with the X-Men may not be Club Med, that's true, but anything must be better than what you're going through. Sinister will find out about McCoy, and he will come for you. Remy, do you honestly think Essex will ever let you out of his sight again after this?"

"Not goin' back."

"You don't have to."

"It funny, Doctor Henri. You not talk down to Gambit when science not an option t' you."

"I don't "talk down" to you!"

"How you like it if Remy LeBeau jus' speak French 'round you?"

"I happen to be quite fluent in the French language."

"Gambit have no advantage wit' Le Beast!"

"No, you don't," Hank chuckled. He put both manacled hands on Remy's shoulders, wincing for the limited range of motion they allowed him. "We're partners. I want to help you, and you have already helped me. Everything will be all right for us. You'll see."

"If you say so, mon ami." Remy didn't sound convinced, but he sighed and settled against Hank's chest. He, too, was chained hand and foot; however, he had a little more movement allowed him because he wasn't staked to the wall as Beast was. "Your fur feels nice, like a big woolly blanket."

"Go to sleep, Remy."

Gambit didn't require coaxing, and soon Beast felt his warm breath tickling the soft fur on his shoulder. Hank spent a few hours watching the wall surface in front of them, but eventually succumbed to fatigue, as well.

"Stinking Beast!"

They both went sprawling across the floor. Hank's first instinct was to hold on to Remy, but quickly decided he'd followed the right course by thrusting him as far away as possible.

McCoy was in a rage, and seemed to feel that it was best vented by taking a length of lead pipe to his doppelganger. It was as if he could no longer abide the sight of the man he had supplanted, a rivalry for a place in existence. He could no longer scheme a complicated demise for Hank; he craved blood--right now.

"You're a Beast! Nothing but a Beast! I'M McCOY!!!!!! YOU'RE AN ANIMAL WHO SHITS IN HIS BED!!!!!!!"

Then he began laughing, striking out with the pipe. Hank tried to shield his face and eyes with his arms, but McCoy didn't care: He struck wherever he could reach, bringing down the thick metal pipe with both hands and all his considerable strength. Chained as he was, Hank couldn't defend himself. Blows rained everywhere upon him, every last one of them with enough force to kill a human. Hank sagged to the floor as the pipe slammed into the small of his back. His face was already pulped beyond recognition and he'd heard more than one bone break since McCoy had taken the pipe to him.

Abruptly, the beating stopped.

Hank heard cursing in French, and managed to get one eye open. Gambit had come to his defense; his body was locked onto McCoy's back with the length of chain between his wrist shackles looped around his captor's neck, twisting the chain until it bit into the thick furry neck and blood seeped from the throat of the Black Beast.

McCoy roared with fury, trying to get ahold of Gambit and throw him off. They reeled around the room together, locked in an absurd, hateful dance.

Sugar Man, Havok, and Fatale burst into the room and stared at the scene.

"Geddim offa me!" McCoy howled in a most unerudite fashion.

Hank barely had time to shout a warning as Havok raised his arms. Remy heard it, and if he hadn't tucked and somersaulted off McCoy's back in the same instant, he would have been killed by the shock waves of concussive force from the former leader of X-Factor. As it was, it caught him glancing in the side and sent him flying into the wall.

McCoy was grateful enough to Havok to unholster his own weapon and fire a few warning blasts at the ex-Alex Summers. "I need him alive, you imbecile!" he yelled, then ran to Gambit's side to appraise the damage. "Just stunned. And, Havok, if you have any brains left in that ugly skull of yours, you'd better be glad of it."

When Gambit awoke, he was lying in the customary corner next to Hank. The light was dim, but he could make out the bulky outline of his friend's body. "M'Sieur Henri?"

There was no answer.

"Henri?"

Remy didn't have the strength to turn Hank over, but he managed to push one heavy arm out of the way so that he could see Dr. McCoy's face.

"Mon Dieu!"

The Beast had been beaten within an inch of his life. Remy put a hand on his chest, and felt the doctor's heart falter, skipping too many beats.

He would die without help.

Remy lay down beside Hank, pressing closely against him. The Genoshan collar could short-circuit his kinetic powers, but his empathic powers were a part of his very nervous system, a part of his makeup that couldn't be stripped from him. He had never used those powers in this way, but--he told himself as he steeled his frame--there's a first time for everything. He sent his empathic powers into Hank's battered body, finding the sources of the pain, drawing them into his own soul, easing Hank's suffering and adding it to his own.

But it was too little, too late.

"Oh, Henri," he murmured. "I so sorry."

He curled closer, but he had precious little strength to lend Hank. He had seen the frank hatred in McCoy's golden eyes, and it had repulsed him beyond measure. The creature was working himself into an escalating frenzy of scathing violence directed at his rightful double.

No way was Remy going to let Hank die.

No matter what the cost.

Remy took a deep breath, trying to summon the strength for what he had to do. He consciously dredged his entire being for all the pain and fear that had been locked inside him for so long, and added Hank's own brutalization. To those miseries, he joined Hank's love for all his friends, and lastly--his own love for his newly adopted family, for every last one of them--from Storm, she who was first a younger sister, now almost like a mother to him; to Jean, who set the example and lived it every hour of her life--and lastly, he called his love for Rogue: The first--and only--woman he had ever cherished in his heart.

Then he realized with shattering clarity what he had refused to accept, because he had believed it could never happen for him:

They loved him.

That love would always bathe him with warmth

He was one of them.

No longer was he an outsider, always looking into the windows of the lives of others, yearning for the embrace of acceptance.

Remy LeBeau wept tears of joy along with those of anguish, shocked beyond measure at his own discovery.

He never wanted to give it up

But he did

He let it go, sending all that love blazing along his own psi channels and beyond.

Remy awoke being dragged across the floor by Sugar Man, startled by the rattling of his own chains. The fiend had him by the collar of his robe, which simply fell apart from the dampness and rot in the dank corner he shared with Hank. "Huh," growled Sugar Man, who merely seized Remy by the scruff of the neck and picked him up like a stray kitten. "Youpretty," was his initial assessment of the Cajun, quickly followed by, "Needs abath."

Not that Sugar Man smelled like a perfume distillery, by any stretch of the imagination or olfactory glands. Of course Remy knew that he himself could have gone rolling in skunk juice and it wouldn't have made the slightest difference to Sugar Man: It was the filthiness of his captor that counted--the furtive ways he touched the handsome prisoner, the lecherous fondling and exploring, the slavering kisses and all those tongues--oh yes, it was time for another session of the like that had made Sugar Man infamous in his own age.

Gambit could never resign himself to these unwanted attentions. He was a man born for lovemaking, but Sugar Man's perversions were a horror for him; Remy preferred to make love in the healthy, all-encompassing ways, and he'd been ignorant of this brand of gratification--until now. Even Sinister, for all his continual demands for semen, was not a sexual predator for whom Remy's loathing and fear were aphrodisiacs. Sugar Man adored frightening Remy, hurting him, making him feel dirty and embittered. The Genoshan collar emboldened the fiend, along with the special cuffs with no visible locking mechanism which McCoy had forged, and Gambit's deteriorating health. There was no help to be sought from Hank, who remained unconscious most of the time since his beating; nor from McCoy, who--while he didn't share Sugar Man's tastes--certainly didn't object to his partner's indulgences and excesses--as long as he was efficient in obtaining the desired genetic material and taking care of the source of it.

When Remy was down to nothing to wear but his manacles and collar, Sugar Man tossed him into a deep submerged tank filled to the brim with hot water and--bubble bath?!

There was even a toy plastic duck bobbing merrily in the shallow end of the pool. Naturally, Sugar Man's techniques for washing captives consisted of much scrubbing, rubbing, and dropping of the soap. All the while he indulged in a steady stream of baby talk and coaxing, sending one tongue after another darting into the water to hold still the soaped, writhing victim. Finally there were enough tongues wrapped around Remy's body that he could not move at all unless Sugar Man permitted.

Drowning in despair if not bathwater, Remy closed his eyes and tried to imagine that it was Rogue touching him. But there was no way he could have succeeded in the attempt, because he was literally up to his neck in horrors. Her touch would be gentle, loving--healing. This was beyond abomination, draining away all dignity and hope, nothing but one violation relentlessly following after another. While he'd never been particularly modest, he found that he couldn't look into those greedy eyes as they enveloped him, couldn't resign himself to these constant defilements. Remy gasped as a tongue slid around his hips and into his body, probing, as another tongue wrapped itself around his penis and began to try to milk it again for more semen. He felt something sharp touch his throat, and a sticky paw cupped his chin with enough force to leave marks on his jaw.

Sugar Man's hideous face loomed only a few inches from his own, and one of his many hands held a sharp, double-edged knife at Gambit's throat. Two of Sugar Man's other hands clumsily dabbed rouge over Remy's nipples as he slobbered rapturously at the Cajun. He leaned closer, completely absorbed in handling the prisoner, and his grin was ugly as he said, succinctly and with none of his affectations or slangs: "Do I frighten you?"

The knife pricked Remy's throat, just the slightest bit, just enough to draw blood.

So, Remy mused, the monster wants an answer.

"Do I frighten you?" Sugar Man repeated.

Eyes half-closed, the Cajun smiled, dreamy--almost wistful. What a thing to ask of him! What could possibly be worse than his life had already become? He was nothing but a source of sperm for McCoy, and a plaything for Sugar Man. It was so laughable that he almost forgot his terror and revulsion at Sugar Man's attentions. He rested his head over the rim of the pool, baring his throat for the knife. He was only taunting the deformed devil: Sugar Man didn't dare use that knife, and they both knew it.

But Sugar Man's next words only perplexed Remy:

"Come anycloser an' I kill 'im."

He looked around him, and his heart soared in his chest even as it went crashing through the tattered remains of his brittle bravado.

The X-Men, all of them--Cyclops, Storm, Bishop, Wolverine, Joseph, Psylocke, Phoenix, Archangel, Iceman--and worst of all, his own Rogue--stood at the open doorway of McCoy's lab. They were wearing their colors and ready to fight. "We've come for Gambit, Beast, and Havok," Cyclops said with that authoritative voice of his that wouldn't take no for answer.

Rogue's eyes met Remy's, banishing all his doubts about her true feelings, and he dropped his head in shame. She loved him--not Joseph, not Bobby, or anyone else--always had and always would. She'd been confused since Seattle, but no longer. He couldn't bear for her to see him like this--her love for him was tangible, especially for an empath, burning through the barriers he'd painstakingly tried to set up to shield himself, leaving his heart raw and aching for wanting to touch her, be held by her.

McCoy just grinned. "Well, you can't have them. So there."

Wolverine began to growl, deep down in his throat.

"I'd rather not have fisticuffs in my laboratory, ladies and gentlemen," said McCoy. "It's hell on the Petri dishes. Tell you what: You can have Havok and the Beast if you will just exhibit the good manners to quietly depart and refrain from returning."

"We won't leave without Gambit."

"Really?" McCoy was amused. "I don't think you'll want LeBeau back amongst you." He pushed a button on his computer console. When he'd told Sugar Man that his deformed creation under the floor could chimerize ambient psyonic impressions into digital resource data, he wasn't kidding. And Gambit found himself beyond despair when all the monitors in the room flicked on, playing back the entire sordid story of his meeting with Mr. Sinister, from the debacle in the Zenith Theater to the moment that Sinister left him on his father's doorstep. Undoubtedly, they'd fought the creatures hatched from his DNA, and seen even more of their dirty work. He wanted to die and evaporate into the air. The X-Men didn't move, transfixed by the rotten history.

At last McCoy spoke again. "So you see, my friends, Gambit here isn't exactly X-Men material. If he was willing to talk--which clearly, he isn't--he would himself ask you to exit without him."

Logan spoke up. "I'd rather hear it from him. Tell your stooge to move that knife away from LeBeau's throat."

McCoy grinned, in the mood to needle the would-be rescuers. "Cyclops, you really should leave your talking dog home in his kennel."

Them was fighting words.

(but the last thing he ever wanted)

From the corner of his eye, Remy saw Wolverine hurtle the distance from the door like a living rocket, saw his claws slice through a score of the tongues Sugar Man held him with, and the knife dropped into the bathwater, sinking and coming to rest between Remy's legs.

(is for the X-Men to see him like this)

Gingerly, he picked up the blade, fumbling only a little as he got his fingers around the hilt.

(Of all his torments, this is the worst, the only one he can't bear)

The X-Men were putting up a good fight, but McCoy's denizens seemed legion and actually seemed to have them somewhat at bay.

(Plenty of time)

The Summers brothers were near the door, engaged in a take-no-prisoners face-off that rocked the subterranean lair.

(Remy turns the knife over in his hands.)

He saw Rogue, single-mindedly fighting her way toward him, taking out two or three of McCoy's creatures with each punch that she threw. Her love and protectiveness of him made her combat skills even more fearsome.

(Oh, Roguie, my love, it be too late, don' you see dat?)

Betsy seemed to be making some progress in hand-to-hand against Fatale. For all her suspicion and misgivings, she still fought for him.

(He draws the knife deeply across his right wrist then repeats the process, slitting open the veins in his left wrist)

Wolverine sat astride Sugar Man, tirelessly slashing off the serpentine tongues, one after another, with his claws. His expression of disgust looked as though he was in the process of squashing the world's largest cockroach.

(And deliberately sinks below the surface of the hot bathwater)

Another awakening was iminent. Hopefully, he would open his eyes and find himself either in Heaven (highly unlikely) or Hell (well, maybe that wouldn't be so bad--not after all he'd been through). Remy inhaled deeply. His surroundings smelled pleasantly and familiarly of his own tobacco and of magnolias (Rogue's perfume?!). Now THAT was worth opening his eyes for.

He did and found himself back in the four-poster at the X-Mansion, warmly bundled into flannel sheets and a down comforter. His wrists were heavily bandaged in thick gauze, but Rogue sat on the side of his bed, holding both his hands in her own gloved ones. Her hands felt warm in spite of the thin layer of cloth between her skin and his. Storm sat on his other side, watching him carefully.

The rest of the X-Men, even Professor Xavier, sat in a semi-circle around him.

Remy bit down on a moan.

"We couldn't peacefully decide who'd get to stay with you--so we all did," Jean volunteered.

Gambit closed his eyes.

He couldn't bear to look at them.

He had nothing to say.

Storm said, "Hank will be fine. You saved him, Remy. But I am afraid that Havok was able to escape, along with McCoy and Sugar Man."

Remy was happy for even a small victory--it was good news, that Hank would fully recover.

Then he felt the mattress creak with the additional weight of another body sitting down on the bed beside Ororo.

"I've got something I have to tell all of you."

Cyclops voice.

Now what?

Remy firmly expected yet another stern lecture, even a summary dismissal from the X-Men, but Scott audibly inhaled and began to talk, hesitantly at first--then faster and faster, until the words came pouring from his mouth like water. "Seeing what Sinister did to Remy. Well, it brought back some memories. Painful memories. I--uh, I remember the time--it--it--well, I'd left the X-Men, I guess I was trying to sort out my head, but I . . . ran into Sinister. He took my ruby quartz glasses. I was afraid to open my eyes, for fear that I might blast and kill someone if I couldn't see them. And maybe . . . maybe I was just plain afraid, too. Sinister--well, he did .. . . things to me. Like he did to Remy. And . . . at the same time. I knew he was holding someone else in the laboratory, another prisoner whose genetic material was of interest to him, and he mentioned once that it was someone who'd been injured badly and whom he was caring for."

Jean took his arm, but he waved her away. He had to confess this. "I haven't been able to tell anyone about it. I let him take whatever he wanted; he promised to return my glasses--and he eventually did, and let me go. Since then, I've wondered--if there hadn't been . . . something--I could have done. To foil his schemes. To--help the other prisoner."

"Not when you can pulverize anybody who gets in the way of your optic beams, Scotty," Warren said. "You had to go along with it or risk killing others."

"I hadn't met Gambit then. I knew that Sinister had another prisoner, but I didn't go back for him. I didn't know how, at least that's what I told myself--Sinister just left me in a cornfield or something. But maybe, it would be closer to the truth to say I was afraid of going back. He always used the drugs, but even though my remembrances were fuzzy, I couldn't bear to think of it happening again. So I didn't go back. I'm sorry, Remy."

Remy abruptly sat up. "You not have to do dis to yourself, mon ami."

"You don't understand. I'm doing it FOR myself."

Professor X hovered closer, and gently said, "I think that what Scott is trying to say is that a burden shared is a burden halved."

Scott nodded, gulping back a lump in his throat. He couldn't look Remy in the eye.

"Dat not always so," Remy said, impatient with the lot of them. Maybe Scott could come clean with the X-Men, but not him. He'd rather try to steal all the gold in Fort Knox and carry it out on his back than endure the whole group scrutinizing his actions. "T'ank you for fixing up my hands, but dis don't change anyt'ing for me. I be leaving here when I can."

He suddenly yelped for the pain in his shoulders as Rogue pinned them to the bed with the tiniest fraction of her unbelievable strength. "You don't have ta hide from us anymore, Remy. All this time, ya been kickin' yourself fo' doin' jus' what any X-Man should have done. Don' be 'shamed of yourself; we're so proud of ya we could all pop. Meantime, we all jus' try to learn from our experiences, and go on lahk we always do. Ah know Ah jus' learned me a coupla things from Mr. Sinister: First, if Ah don' lahk your talk o' leavin', Ah jus' hol' ya prisoner--an' lessee ya try t' escape from ME, sugah. An' second, you a dyed-in-th'-wool X-Man to th' bone, Remy--no doubt 'bout it now."

Remy didn't get it. He cocked his head and asked, "What you mean, chere?"

Professor X almost chuckled. "What she means, Remy, is this: When you had the opportunity to kill Sinister's monsters, but couldn't bring yourself to destroy them, even though you knew they represented a deadly menace; when you consistently put aside your own fears and enter into peril for the sakes of others--in this case alone for those people in the theater and for Hank--you exhibited every quality required to be able to call yourself one of us. All this time, and you have suffered in silence simply for being an X-Man. Stay with us, Gambit. We need you."

The Cajun stared incredulously at his teacher. No one had ever told him that they needed him, and he didn't know quite what to make of it.

"It was my fault, Remy. I could have spared you all of it. I can't make many promises to my fellow X-Men, but I'll make you one now: I'll die before I let something like that happen to you again," Scott said, and for the first time since Remy had known him, there was nothing pompous or dictatorial about him. He didn't even need his empathic abilities to know that Scott was sincere, and meant every word he said. That oath meant more to Remy LeBeau than any promise he'd ever been given.

"You are a part of us, Father," Bishop said. "Without you, we are weakened."

Scott put his hand on Remy's shoulder. "Never again, Remy. As long as I live."

"Same goes for all of us, kid," said Logan.

He had to smile, so happy he couldn't help it. He was free. It felt as though he'd been dragging a ton of chains and cement behind him for so many years; now his shackles had fallen away from him, just as he'd dreamed it but never dared hope for. They all knew what he'd done, but it made no difference in their love for him--and maybe, just maybe, it wasn't such a crime, after all. He reached out to Scott, accepting the strong hand offered him. "It okay, mon frere. We got the same problem: M'Sieur Sinister got his eye on us. I watch your back if you watch mine, oui?"

"That means y'all gonna stay!" Rogue caught Remy in a bear hug so tight it made him gasp.

He could only nod helplessly as they all joined the embrace, gathering him into their midst like the beloved prodigal returned to the fold, and be glad--so very glad--that he was reunited with his family.