This story features the X-Men and other related characters, which are copyrighted by Marvel Entertainment/Marvel Comics Group and are used without permission. The use of these characters in this story is not intended to infringe on that copyright. No profit is being made on this work, it's written solely for entertainment purposes. This work is copyright of me and may not be used for commercial purposes.
It's All In Your Head: Part Fifteen
by sevenall
"What do you think you are doing, woman?" Bishop bellowed. "What am I supposed to do with all this energy?"
Elizabeth saw that he was glowing. Small sparks jumped from his fingertips. For some reason she felt like laughing, because Bishop was Bishop and always would be, and because he had come to save her. Dependable, predictable and boring, he was all that, and she'd rather have him at her back than anyone else. Then she saw Remy in the hallway and tried to go for him. Bishop caught her around the waist, jolting her with a transfer of voltage.
"That can wait", he told her. "Let's go."
Elizabeth suddenly felt weak with reaction. Bishop took another look at her, swore, then swung her up on his shoulder as if she had been a sack of potatoes. She still felt a tingle in her skin where her body touched his and she had to resist laughing again.
"Up here", Remy said, and pointed up at the ceiling. Elizabeth groaned. The inevitable ventilation system crawl. If she ever wanted to do illegal things, she would do it without ventilation or sewers, and the superhero gang could just bomb the site from afar.
"It gets worse", Bishop panted helpfully, as if he had read her thoughts. "We're going out through the sewers."
Elizabeth had to let Remy lift her into the duct. Bishop pulled her up, and for what felt like a mile or so, he half-dragged, half-carried her through the complicated ventilation system. At several points, Remy stopped and made a couple of quick adjustments to cables and faucets along the way. Elizabeth guessed that he was trying to disable com systems and electronic locks, or just creating confusion. She wished she had paid more attention to electronics so she'd known exactly what he did. Well, she had to trust that Remy wanted to save his own skin, at least.
Then it was the obligatory drop down to the floor in a basement, Bishop lowered her down and Remy received her. She took a few steps away from him. The lights were out. Once Bishop had shut the trap-door, she couldn't see at all. She heard someone, probably Remy peel his gloves off, and start working on a lock. There was a circle of light directed at his hands, and she heard metal click against metal. That meant a manual lock, which in turn meant that they could really be in trouble if Remy couldn't get it open. She wondered who was in charge of the logistics of this op.
"Voila", Remy said, rising from his hunched position. He opened the door, the pen-light illuminating his outstretched arm as he made an exaggerated bow to Elizabeth. "Ladies first", he said.
The laser beam took his arm off somewhere between the elbow and the shoulder. The penlight dropped to the floor. Bishop threw himself forward, blindly, to slam the door shut again. Elizabeth stumbled for Remy, trying to help, but he shoved her away, hard, and as she fell to the floor, she saw him pick up the penlight again, making the motion that would draw the fire from Bishop and cost him the other arm. Then the door was shut, and Elizabeth scrambled to Remy's side, ripping off the first-aid packages strapped to his thigh. The arteries in his upper arms had constricted from the shock, and he hadn't started to bleed yet. She wound a tourniquet round one arm, then the other. She got out his specific painkiller, pressed it hard against his neck and injected it. There was another injection that would counter the shock, she shot him with that too. As she tightened the bandages, her hands got wet. He was bleeding.
"Oh shit oh shit oh shit", she heard herself saying.
Bishop was by her side now, pulling at the bandages with greater strength than she had, while Remy's blood pumped out of him and sprayed them both.
"Where's the goddamn back-up?" she yelled at him.
"There isn't any !"he yelled back. "This was simple get in, get the info and get out, until we found you in the middle of the FOH braincloning center, and the whole operation went foul on us!"
Elizabeth got out another painkiller, injected it into what was left of Remy's arm and hoped for the blood flow to stop. It was a question of minutes now, or he would bleed to death in front of them.
"No com, nothing?" she asked desperately, although she knew that if there had been any way to communicate with the rest of the X-Men, Bishop would have done so long ago.
"We put a virus into their security system", Bishop informed her. "But the laser source must have been really simple, disconnected from the main system, triggered by photocell..."
He was babbling, Elizabeth realised. Had her hands been free, she would have slapped him to get him out of it, but holding onto Remy was the only thing that kept him from slipping away. She didn't know what to do. Kwannon knew, though.
"Alphonse-Gaston", Kwannon said through her mouth, cold bored voice with a musical lilt. "Get your shit together."
Bishop stopped.
"Now", Elizabeth said," I've got a com unit here, patched into their system..."
At that point, she was interrupted. There was a faint shimmer in the air, and Mr Nathaniel Essex aka Mr Sinister, was there, standing a few feet above the floor on what resembled a teleport disk.
"I will trade with you", he said.