Home | Forum | Mailing List | Repository | Links | Gallery
 
 
Chapters
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
 
 
 

Betrayal - REVIEW THIS STORY

Written by Valerie Jones
Last updated: 01/02/2007 02:01:11 AM

Chapter 23

*Remy, what're y' doin'?* he asked himself as he stared at the computer screen. He was in the danger room observation booth, and the screen showed that he had access to the directory he wanted. No one had thought to put more than the ordinary protections on it. Of course, the X-men were only thinking about someone trying to hack in from the outside. There were very few things in the computer system that all of the X-men didn't have access to. Henry's and the Professor's research files were the first things that sprang to mind in that category. Like every other X-man currently living in the mansion, Remy had the codes for all of the defense systems, tracking hardware, and all of the other interesting technology housed there.

And he could easily access the directory holding the Witness' program. Before he could talk himself out of it, Remy deleted the program and the data files, then overwrote that section of memory with something else. That would make certain no one could retrieve it. He did the same with the log of his conversation with the Witness. Then he shut down the console and left. There were several other copies of the program, and he was going to have to do some thieving to get to them.

The house was quiet. Cyclops and most of the blue team were out, checking into some trouble on the west coast, so half of the X-men weren't present at all. The other half were either sleeping or off on their own business. The only person whose location Gambit didn't know was Bishop, but he ought to be out on the grounds somewhere. Using Cerebro to locate him would only make Bishop suspicious when he checked the logs later, and that was the last thing Remy wanted.

Not that that was going to make much difference, if Remy were willing to admit it to himself. Bishop would know it was him. Everyone else would at least suspect. And, honestly, what he was doing didn't make a whole lot of sense, even to him. He just felt like he had to do something, fight back somehow against the forces whose only interest seemed to be in getting him hurt and killed.

He had realized a while back that the Witness had set him up. Even if Elizabeth hadn't attacked him, the Professor would eventually have been talked into scanning him. Either that, or he would have had to leave, and abandon everything that had meaning to him. Now the Witness seemed intent on getting him killed-- as if this were all some bizarre kind of suicide for reasons that Remy couldn't begin to fathom. Still, if killing him were all that there was to saving the X-men, the Witness would simply have told Bishop who the traitor was, and Bishop would have blown him away the moment they met. That only made sense. But this cat and mouse game didn't make any sense, and Remy didn't want to be caught up as a pawn in something he could neither understand nor control.

His chances of survival, and hopefully the X-men's as well, were better if he just worked this all out on his own.

That was what he kept telling himself, anyway, as he worked the lock on Henry's door. It was double-coded, with a numeric punch pad that was the bane of thieves everywhere. Luckily, Remy was better than most of those thieves. Punch pads were a pain, but not impossible. He opened the door and stepped into the airlock. The system for cycling through into the lab was automatic, so he stood still while the equipment scanned him and completed its decontamination routine. Caught in the airlock, he felt very exposed, and vulnerable. Eventually, the inner door slid open. Henry's lab was silent and dark, except for the glow of dimmed monitors that showed the current status of some experiment or another. Pale lighting shone through the door leading to the Cray that backed up Cerebro when the computing requirements became too heavy. Lettering on the door's window read "Climate Contolled Area". Hank's experiments created a maze of delicate equipment, though Remy knew better than to touch any of that. He headed for the solitary computer terminal that sat like a squat white frog on Henry's desk.

The monitor hummed softly as it came to life, counterpoint to the whir of the cooling fan on the back of the drives. Remy went to work. He was a good hacker, and knew what he was looking for, so it didn't take very long. He found both the original english and converted shi'ar versions of the program and erased them. Incredibly organized man that Henry was, there were also backup disks. The CD's surfaces ran with liquid rainbows as the light caught them. Since they didn't have anything else stored on them, a flash of Gambit's power took care of those.

And that left the paper copies. That horrendous stack of pages they had written the original translation down on. Most of it had been lines and lines of numbers-- data files. Even Henry and the Professor would not have memorized all of that. He began searching through the desk, careful not to disturb anything. Finding nothing, he went on to the file cabinet, which was locked. It took him less than a second to spring the primitive device, and the top drawer opened with a metal scrape. He flipped through the file folders with practiced ease, finding nothing. The file he wanted was in the bottom drawer, thoughtfully stored under the label "Witness". Remy pulled it out, closed the drawer and straightened. His knee popped as he stood, sounding deafening in the quiet lab. And on the heels of that noise came another-- the distinctive click and whine of Bishop's gun being readied.

"Hold it right there, LeBeau."

Remy froze, cursing himself for his inattention. He should have heard the airlock cycling. And Bishop, he knew, had an itchy trigger finger.

He put on his best smile, though Bishop couldn't see it. "Wit a delivery like dat, Bishop, y' should be in de movies," he said.

Remy turned around slowly, hands raised. The file folder was still clenched in one of them. Bishop blocked the doorway, the pale night-lighting in the hallway giving him the appearance of a halo.

"What are you doing here?" The question was more of an accusation. Unfortunately, a rather legitimate one. Remy considered his alternatives. Bishop would be hard to bluff, and it wasn't like he wouldn't know what Remy had done eventually. So, perhaps the truth was in order. Bishop certainly wouldn't be expecting him to play straight.

"If y' gotta know, Bish, I'm erasin' de Witness. Y' want t' help?"

Bishop's eyes widened in surprise, and the tip of the gun muzzle quivered slightly. Remy noted it with a sense of triumph. He'd called that one right on. Bishop had no idea what to make of the friendly question.

"I don't think that's a decision you should be making, LeBeau," he finally answered. There was a heavy uncertainty in his voice.

"Why not?" Remy still had not moved. He didn't want to distract Bishop and break the moment. Bishop was normally too suspicious to fall for this little mental trick. It was about all Remy could do with his telepathic powers-- offensively, at least. He continued, keeping his tone light, "I figure I've got as much right t' mess wit him as he has t' mess wit me. `Sides, I t'ought you'd want t' see him gone. He de one screwed y' life up, right?"

"Uh, yeah." Bishop's eyes had glazed a little, and his hand was more relaxed on the gun, though he still had it trained on Gambit.

Remy thought furiously. Charming women was so much easier, and he still didn't have a clue how he was going to get Bishop to move out of the doorway.

"Dis file's all dat's left of him." Remy didn't move his hand, but glanced in the papers' direction to draw Bishop's attention to it.

"Maybe y' wan' t' burn it y'self? Not as good as de real t'ing, o' course, but it'd feel good, eh?"

The aim of the weapon shifted slightly. Behind it, Bishop's expression was dark. Then a beam of energy lanced out of the gun, striking the file folder squarely in the middle. The bundle of papers exploded in Remy's hand, and the high energy beam continued on past to strike the cabinet behind him. Remy hit the floor with a startled cry, burning papers raining down around him.

"Not in de lab, y' fool!" he yelled. A part of him was amazed. Bishop must really have hated the Witness for his little suggestion to trigger that kind of reaction. A red alarm light on the wall began to flash with the accompanying warning siren.

Bishop's own surprise turned into a roar of fury. "You *tricked* me! Traitor!"

Remy scrabbled for purchase and leapt away as another beam of energy struck the place where he'd been laying. He hit the ground behind one of the tables in the room and rolled to his feet. Mystifying equipment lined the table, filled with various fluids that dripped and burbled. He had a horrifying vision of what might happen if a blast shattered that delicate equipment-- Henry was working on the Legacy virus. Those little vials could very well be full of the stuff. Remy turned and ran straight for the wall beside the doorway, charged cards flying. He knew he was giving Bishop one clear shot at him, but that beat dying slow of the Legacy in Remy's book.

The cards hit the wall and blew a sizable hole through the metal. Remy felt a slicing pain as he dove through it and knew Bishop had tagged him somewhere. He hit the floor of the hallway in a cloud of smoke and hot metal fragments. The lights had come on in the hall in response to the alarm triggered by weapons fire in the lab, but the smoke made everything hazy. Remy had barely gotten to his feet when something slammed into him, carrying him to the ground. He ducked the fist aimed at his face, taking a dizzying blow to the side of the head instead, and drove his own fist into Bishop's kidney. He was in a bad position with Bishop essentially on top of him, so the blow didn't have a whole lot of force behind it, but it was enough to win a grunt of pain. With the other hand, Remy grabbed Bishop's wrist, digging his thumb into the nerves to make him drop the gun. The weapon fired twice though Remy had no idea where the beams might have ended up. Bishop refused to let go of the gun and pulled their locked arms down far enough that he could bite Remy's hand. Remy let go with a yell and made a grab for the gun. He got his fingers on it just long enough to charge up a part of the barrel. It exploded with very little oomph, but at least it twisted the metal enough to make the weapon unusable. Bishop threw it away with a curse.

This was the kind of down-and-dirty street fighting Remy had grown up with, though it had been a while. He was at a serious disadvantage in both weight and reach, but he'd grown up with that, too. Oddly, he found himself loathe to pull a knife and put a quick end to the fight. It didn't seem right, even though Bishop was doing his level best to kill him.

Suddenly, there were more lights, and shouting. Arms wrapped around Remy from behind, dragging him away. Similar arms held Bishop. It took Remy a moment to realize that it was Beast's furry arms that held him in a thoroughly unbreakable bear hug. The tight grip made the fresh burn on his ribs scream. Rogue and Warren held Bishop. The blue team must have gotten back, Remy thought. Scott was there, still in uniform, along with the other members of the blue team. The other X-men were there, too, only in their pajamas. The professor was the last to arrive. His silk robe gleamed dully as the light struck it. There was no mistaking the anger in his face.

Remy felt a flash of shame. What *was* he going to tell the professor? All of a sudden he felt like an idiot-- what in the world had made him think that destroying the Witness was going to make his life any better? It was just another one of those stupid decisions he'd made, with no thought of the consequences to himself or anyone else. Smoke roiled inside the lab, contained by the force field that had surrounded the room. Remy knew that meant he and Bishop had released something dangerous in there, and now Cerebro was acting to contain it. His stupidity could very well have just exposed every single one of the X-men to the Legacy virus.

The thought of Rogue or Storm dying of the horrible disease chased the last of Remy's defiance away.

The professor seemed to follow Gambit's thought pattern as he studied him. But when he spoke, his voice was rigid with suppressed anger. "Very well. I do not think I need to say anything at this point." Remy felt the blood drain from his face.

Then the professor turned to Bishop. "Would you care to explain what, exactly, is going on here?"

Even Bishop had the grace to look abashed. "Sir, I found Gambit in Henry's lab. He destroyed the Witness program."

The professor's eyebrow lifted. "I see. And this was worth demolishing Henry's lab-- months of valuable research?" The question was frighteningly mild.

Bishop didn't answer. He lowered his eyes a fraction and looked away from the professor. After a moment, the professor nodded to himself as if satisfied by that reaction. He turned his hoverchair and looked at Scott over his shoulder.

"Scott, Henry, come with me, please. We have a briefing to finish. I suggest that the rest of you get some sleep. There is little that can be done here until Cerebro has scrubbed the atmosphere in the lab." Without a further word, he moved away. Henry released Remy completely and nodded to Scott. The two of them moved to follow the professor. Henry glanced at his lab only once as they passed the hole in the wall, and his expression seemed to Remy to be one of hurt more than anger, as if he'd lost something precious. And, Remy reasoned, perhaps he had. Curing the Legacy virus meant a great deal to Henry. At heart he was a scientist, a doctor, and a healer. Not a soldier. Remy had just made it harder for him to do what he loved most.

The other X-men dispersed quietly, until only Remy, Bishop and Ororo were left in the hall. The disappointment in her face was plain, and it hurt even more than the professor's anger.

"I'm. . . . . sorry, `Ro," Remy said. He didn't dare call her Stormy. Not now.

"You should be." Her words were flat, but her voice still held a hint of its usual warmth. She laid her hand on his arm. "When you are ready to talk about this, I am curious to know why you felt it necessary to erase the Witness." Her eyes held some sympathy, underlaid by steel. Remy had the feeling she would eventually demand answers if he did not volunteer them. He didn't know what to say. After a moment of silence, she turned to Bishop.

"Come. It is late." She led him, unprotesting, away. Remy was left standing in the hall, watching them leave. He hadn't felt so completely alone for a very long time.

 

GambitGuild is neither an official fansite of nor affiliated with Marvel Enterprises, Inc.
Nonetheless, we do acknowledge our debt to them for creating such a wonderful character and would not dream of making any profit from him other than the enrichment of our imaginations.
X-Men and associated characters and Marvel images are © Marvel Enterprises, Inc.
The GambitGuild site itself is © 2006 - 2007; other elements may have copyrights held by their respective owners.