Subject: [OTL]: The Chosen Ones [2/12]
Date: Fri, 8 Oct 1999 08:12:54 -0700 (PDT)
From: D Benway <d_benway@yahoo.com>

The Chosen Ones, Part 2 of 12
The Blasted Heath
Benway did this.

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This story is not intended for children of any age. It contains
descriptions of human behaviour which many might find distressing.
You have been warned.

The characters belong to Marvel. The story is my own, and copyright
to me. Many thanks for the editorial assistance of Luba K and Tina S.
Other stories are archived at the website of Luba.

********************************************************************

He walked through the brush, away from the school. He passed through
a clearing that opened onto the Snow River, flowing slowly past. It
might have been one of the rivers in the hills of his birth, but for
the nature of the waste it carried into the ocean. It would be flowing
slowly past, just like this, long after all of them were dead. He
could be seen by four cameras where he stood now, but once he was
back in the bush the best they would be able to manage was IR. Kitty
had told him that she had that fixed. He prayed that she was right.

He hated being watched all the time, more than anything. It reminded
him of the day when he realized what it meant when they said that
God was watching everything that he did. His mother had found him
hiding under the stairs, crying. When she asked him why, he said

"I'm damned. God saw me."

He knew it then, and he was sure that Rahne knew it still. He didn't
feel that way anymore. His mother had held him and told him that God
looked down on him with Love, and that as long as he tried to do
what was right with all his strength, his soul would be saved. What
he had seen in her eyes had been closer to God than anything he had
seen in any book or heard from any preacher. Even so, knowing that
someone other than Hellfire Club goons were watching over him was
sometimes the only thing that kept him going. He wasn't sure what
kept the others going. He wasn't sure that all of them would stay
the course.

He entered the second clearing. He could hear the river beyond the
trees, but couldn't see it. Tall, leafy bushes surrounded it on all
the sides. The others were already there, having arrived by
different paths. Doug was crouching, with his head down between his
knees. Kitty was crouching beside him, with her arm around his
shoulders. Illyana was off on the other side, watching them with a
neutral expression.

"So fair and foul a day I have not seen," he said.

The words came to him from the play that he had been reading. They
came more easily than anything natural would have, after months of
watching every word.

"We're short two witches though," said Doug, smiling weakly.

Doug looked like he hadn't slept in a month. He might not have, if
had been spending as much time on the Hellfire Club codebreaking
project as he had been spending on breaking the Club's own codes.
Illyana exhaled a smoke ring, which Doug didn't see. It drifted over
Doug's head and hovered there for a moment before dissipating. He
would have been more comfortable if she had been smoking something.

"Any tails?" asked Kitty.

"No," he said. "I followed the path you suggested. Bobby wanted to
talk to me, so I had to get rid of him. That's why I'm late."

"We've got 30 minutes," said Kitty. "Isn't that right?"

"Almost," said Doug. "Twenty-seven now. Then we have to be out of
here."

"I thought the whole place was watched."

"It is," said Doug. "They were stupid, though. They put the cameras
in back in the Spring, before the undergrowth grew back. Used as few
as possible, to cut costs. Earned some poor fucker a pair of
concrete shoes."

"What about sound?"

"The river messes up the mikes," said Kitty. "We put a loop in the
security system that just runs samples from the leaf and river
sounds that they hear all the time. We arrived during the shift
change Down Below, so I doubt if anyone saw us walk in."

"I thought they changed the guard at random times," he said,
uncomfortably. He could imagine a horde of faceless ones clustering
around a monitor, tensing in anticipation of beatings to come.

"They do change at random times, but their random number generator
belongs to me," said Doug, with a small smile.

He knew it couldn't have been easy. The Hellfire Club had a great
deal of xenotech linked to their systems, and Doug had told him how
much harder it was to penetrate than normal terrestrial systems.

"Is it safe?"

Illyana snorted.

"You've got to be fucking kidding," said Doug. "It's breaking the
Compact. If our families are alive tonight, we'll know that they
couldn't see us."

"Great," muttered Illyana. "Now that's out of the way, can we get on
with it?"

Doug was getting his cigarettes out, but wasn't finding his lighter.
Illyana muttered something and a faint orange glow appeared at the
end of the cigarette.

"Thanks," said Doug, barely hiding a tremor of fear in his voice.

"Did you lose it on the way?" asked Kitty.

"No. Left it somewhere. Back in the house."

"You're sure?" he asked.

"We have 25 minutes left," grumbled Illyana. "If he wasn't sure, he
can look for it on the way back."

"This is the safest we've been in months," said Kitty. "The real
shitstorm might be about to hit, and soon. I think there's a
conflict in Inner Circle."

"A conflict," he said. "Who?"

"Shaw versus Frost," said Kitty. "We think he's behind the attack on
Angelica."

"We got proof?"

"Circumstantial," said Doug. "There was a lot of traffic between
Shaw and Frost just before and just after. All of it was erased or
taken off the system, but we able to read the logs for the mail
files. None of the stuff that's still on the system refers to the
attacks directly, but Shaw's messages are pretty fucking hostile.
Keeps going on about Frost not breaking us."

"Shaw set some sort of deadline for the end of the month," said
Kitty."I don't know what it's about, but it's at the end of
Founder's week."

"Any word on Angelica?" he asked, his mouth dry.

"Messy," said Illyana, flatly. "Her soul is gone. Only her body
lives."

"Shit," said Kitty.

"So she's dead?" asked Doug.

"Her body lives," snapped Illyana. "Her mind is gone. She sits in
her bed and rocks from side to side, when she does anything at all.
They feed her with a tube. She wears a diaper. Sometimes she screams
for an hour at a time."

He thought that he saw a ghost of a smile flit across Illyana's
lips. "It happened because of the attack?" he asked.

"No," said Doug, hollowly. "Frost did it."

"Frost?"

"We found some security reports," said Doug. "Whoever did it, they
nailed her right out of her bed in the dorm. They dumped her in the
road in front of the gate. They, they-" Doug's mouth worked, but no
further words were coming.

"The med report says that she had been repeatedly raped and
tortured," said Kitty, grimly. "She woke up while they were
examining her Down Under and she fried two nurses and Dr. McKenzie.
We think Frost tried to stop her by breaking down the barrier in her
mind, and messed up."

"Shit," he muttered. "That's what happens when she tries to break
through?" He knew that Frost wanted more than anything to be
able to dismantle the anti-psi barriers in their heads.

Illyana nodded. Doug's hand was shaking as he threw his butt away.
He fumbled for his lighter again. Illyana obliged him with another
murmur, and an unintelligble grunt caused the still-smouldering butt
to vanish in a blaze of blue hellfire.

"It doesn't make sense," he said. "How did they rape her in the
first place? Did they knock her out? There's no point to torturing
someone in their sleep, and Angelica would have fried them all if
she was awake."

"I know," said Kitty. "The reports said that she was raped and
tortured while awake. They could tell that from the pattern of the
injuries. There was no head trauma, or any traces of drugs in her
system."

"Do they have anyone that she couldn't fry?" he asked.

"They haven't got anyone microwave-resistant in the club," said
Doug.

"Suppose the stuff you found is made up," he wondered. "Could Frost
just be covering up an attack on the barrier?"

"Don't think so," said Kitty. "Doesn't fit with the other stuff we
found. She's been going out of her way to defend us from Shaw."

"Another telepath?" suggested Doug. "Shaw has Tessa."

"Tessa's read-only," said Kitty. "You have to able to write to break
down a barrier. She's the only telepath besides Frost that Shaw will
allow near him."

"We have twenty minutes," said Illyana, her irritation obvious. "We
plainly don't know enough to decide who did it or how. What truly
makes no sense is that anyone would do it at all. Shaw knew how
powerful she was, and how stupid and manipulable she was. I've known
donkeys with more sense than she had."

"Yana, for fuck's sake," said Doug.

"Illyana does have a point," said Kitty, carefully. "It would have
been a waste, and Shaw doesn't like waste. We should look through
their files again, try to make a list of the enemies of the Inner
Circle."

"The enemy of my enemy is my friend," he muttered.

"We have 19 minutes," said Illyana.

"Maybe-," Kitty was wearing a very abstracted look. "What if we try
to turn Frost?"

"Turn Frost?" he asked, incredulous. "She's the one who's been
trying to break us all along."

"Yeah," said Kitty. "She hadn't been trying all that hard, though,
has she? She hasn't killed one of our hostages yet. Who is the real
enemy here? She has been defending us against Shaw. She agreed to
the pact, and Shaw was really pissed about that. She has been acting
weird ever since the attacks. Why does she spend all her time here,
instead of running her company? If it came down to us against Shaw,
she might take our side."

Illyana was grinning. It was an unpleasant sight. "I like the way
you think, Pryde. She has been spending a lot of time down in that
room with Jones. Trying to fix the damage, I think. Futile. She
cries, when there's no-one to see her."

"I thought Frost could sense you when you looked in," he asked.

"Not when I use the scrying pool," said Illyana. "Only if I try to
go on the astral plane. I'm not trying that again."

He knew well what had happened the first time. Demons all over the
house at Westchester. Still, if someone could get to Illyana on the
astral plane, it would be well worth remembering. Just in case.

"Yeah, Frost loves all the little children," said Doug. "Look at
what she did to James."

"I'm not sure that she was happy about how that turned out, either,"
said Kitty. "She lies to Shaw about it. She tells him that James is
recovering wonderfully when he's stoned out of his mind, passed out
behind the boiler Down Under. I mean, she always tells us how sex
and love aren't the same thing, but maybe she's still got it
confused herself."

"I'm pretty sure she's slept with all the Hellions except for
Sharon," said Illyana. "They all have her smell on them."

"Even the girls?" he asked.

"Oh yes," chuckled Illyana. "Especially the girls."

"Except Sharon," he said. "Do you think that she actually died in a
training accident, like Frost said?"

"That's what the security files said," muttered Doug. "Zapped by a
Kree disintegrator during that live fire exercise that Frost sent
the Hellions into after that trip they took to New York. She was
pissed about that."

"Jean Grey solution," muttered Illyana. "I was watching Berto, not
them. Missed all the fun."

"No body, with a disintegrator," said Kitty. "Convenient. The
Hellions haven't said anything about it. Didn't seem too broken up
about it though. Creeps."

"Yeah," he said. "That's what doesn't make sense. Marie-Ange was hit
pretty hard when James cracked up. After Sharon, if anything, she
looked, well almost happy. Not so dark, like she usually does."

"She broke her arm trying to save Sharon," said Kitty. "Or at least,
that's what they said. Suppose they broke it, as punishment? Maybe
she orchestrated an escape for Sharon."

"Sharon was pretty miserable that last month," he mused. "She wasn't
much use in a fight. I mean, half the time, she would just curl up
in a corner and go to sleep during combat exercises. Frost had her
beaten, I'm sure of it. Didn't do any good. She wasn't human, in
some ways."

"No kidding," said Doug. "Frost didn't just have her beaten, she
pulled the hostage trick with one of the staff Sharon was friendly
with. The dessert lady who left last month? We found a report. They
beat her to death, then threw the head in with Sharon in a cell.
Sharon played with it, ate part of it, and went to sleep."

There was an awkward silence.

"Fifteen minutes," said Illyana.

"Okay," said Kitty firmly. "The Hellions and Frost, maybe not with
Frost, plot to let Sharon escape. She goes, and Marie-Ange has
something to do with it. Frost isn't involved, so she has Marie-Ange
beaten up to make a point, but she lies to Shaw. She doesn't tell
him, because she doesn't want any retribution to fall on Sharon or
Marie-Ange. She doesn't tell us, because she doesn't want us to know
that someone could get away without any hostages being hurt. Shaw
finds out somehow, and sets the dogs on Angelica. What do you
think?"

"It is plausible," said Illyana. "But then perhaps it is Frost and
Shaw, wanting to break us more quickly."

"Yeah," said Kitty. "But if we could turn Frost, we could bring this
whole place down, and free everybody. We've got to get confirmation
of our hypothesis."

"So it's all up to me," said Doug grimly.

"We might be able to find stuff out off the computers," said Kitty,
a faint hesitation in her voice.

"Fuck, it's obvious that if your idea is right, she's not going to
commit things to her computer," snarled Doug. "I'll bet she knows
about Shaw's backdoors onto her systems as well as we do. She didn't
say anything about at her last little summit with you, did she?"

"No," said Kitty, quietly.

"And Sam, you didn't hear anything from your Bible study group, did
you?" asked Doug. "Not that you ever do."

"We do get good info from him," said Kitty. "Logistical info."

"Great. What the help knows. How much extra work they have down in
catering for the next week."

He was bristling. Doug's comment had not been welcome.

"Illyana could split her attention between Shaw and Roberto and
Frost," said Kitty.

"That's spreading me very thin," said Illyana, quietly. " I can't
watch all the time. You know that." She turned to Doug with an
innocent little smile. "Besides, Doug, is so good at getting
information from Haroun."

"See?" said Doug, bitterly. "It does come down to me. He wants you,
Sam, and you know it. He says your name, sometimes, just before he
comes. You could get it from him much more easily than I could, but
you're too fucking pure."

Doug was looking at him with a burning anger.

"It would be wrong," he said quietly.

"I know it's fucking wrong, but _why_ is it wrong for you?"

"Doug," said Kitty. "If you don't want to do it, you don't have to."

Illyana was watching them, suppressing a grin. He wanted to hit her,
very, very much.

"I'm going to fucking do it, because I want to get out of this
fucking place," snarled Doug. "I thought I was getting a start to my
life. Great school, free trip to MIT at the end of it. Instead, I
find out that I've been drafted into your private little war and
that I have to turn tricks with some Arab shit who thinks that
cologne substitutes for bathing. I mean, if I'd been given the
choice, I would have joined you anyways, but I didn't have a fucking
choice did I?"

He was looking at Kitty now with the same burning hatred. She met
his gaze, square on.

"Doug, if I had any say in it, I wouldn't have let Xavier do that to
you. What's done is done. We've gotten more good info from you than
from any other source. We wouldn't be in the system without you.
You've been very brave. If you don't want to do it, you don't have
to."

He was glad that Doug couldn't see the expression on Illyana's face.
When all this was over, he hoped that he would never have to see her
again. She had become darker since they had arrived here, and he
wondered if Frost hadn't found some way in. He wondered if anything
other than Kitty was keeping her here. He was sure that she cared
less for the fate of the hostages than Sharon did.

"I'll get the information," said Doug. "I'll get it, don't worry
about that."

"Suppose we can turn Frost," said Kitty. "What about the others?
Thoughts."

"James and Jenny have darkened souls," said Illyana. "They are not
to be trusted. The others may turn to us."

"We're supposed to trust Manuel?" he asked.

"Maybe," said Kitty. "He really hit it off with Amara. I mean, he
hasn't done _anything_ rotten since he started, um, seeing her. It's
about the only useful thing she's done."

"That's not fair." He should have said that, but Doug did. Any
thoughts about Amara were paralyzing, painful.

"I asked her to keep reading up on math so she can master the
geology and geophysics stuff, and all she does is waste her time on
philosophy," said Kitty, frowning. "I mean, she was reading some
Roman shit by some guy called Camus last time I saw her. She has to
get to know her powers better."

"We can rely on her to stand by us," said Doug. "I'm sure of it.
She's got Manuel on a leash."

"I suppose that you've got Haroun on your leash, or are you on his?"
he asked. He wondered if Amara had gotten to Doug, too. Doug was the
weak one, who could fold and destroy them all. He was sure of it.

"Haroun will go wherever you go," said Doug, with a note of sadness
in his voice.

"If we're right, Marie-Ange is with us," interjected Kitty, glaring
at them both. "I'm pretty sure that she wouldn't fold. She was
Angelica's best friend among them."

"But James and Jenny are out," said Illyana.

"Jenny would betray us, so she could watch them punish us," he said.
"She scares me. I've never met anyone like that before."

"No fuck," said Doug. "I found out some of what she did to Haroun
when she was sleeping with him. Saw the scars. I don't know about
giving up on James, though."

"James is a drunk," said Kitty. "James is completely useless."

"What about our side?" asked Doug. "Who can we trust?"

"Rahne," he said.

"Dannielle can be trusted," said Illyana, with a measure of authority
in her voice.

"She's still mad at us, for cutting her out of the group," said
Kitty, frowning. "She won't talk to me at all. Won't cut me any slack."

"It was fate," said Illyana, with a heaviness in her voice that made
him feel deeply ashamed. "Had they gone a day later, she would have
had the barriers in and both she and Rahne would be with us now."

"Amara," he said, unable to keep a quaver out his voice.

"No," said Kitty. "She's too close to Roberto."

"Frost can't read him," he said.

"That's not the issue," said Kitty. "We have files from the jet that
he took to New York last weekend with his father. Lots of comments
about joining the mile high club. There were ten 'stewardesses' on
that flight, and four passengers. They spent an hour circling
LaGuardia, making up excuses not to land. Then they went to the Club
in New York. Do you want to see how many times he ordered flavored
condoms sent up?"

"It could be disinformation," he said. "He told me he was seeing his
mother."

"If it's disinformation, they know we're on the system and we're
fucked," muttered Doug. "If it isn't, they've turned him."

"You just don't like him," he said, in a level tone. "You've never
gotten along."

"No, maybe he doesn't make start making fag jokes every time you
come into the room," snarled Doug. "Maybe I wouldn't laugh along if
he did."

He had laughed. It had been funny. It hadn't even occurred to him
until it was far too late. When he seen the look in Doug's eyes,
then the laughter had stopped.

"Eight minutes," said Illyana.

"We need to plan what we're going to do next," said Kitty. "We
should meet in a week or so, to decide if Frost can be turned. I'll
leave notes in the blue places, next Thursday."

"Yeah," he said.

"Sure," said Doug.

Illyana nodded.

"Illyana, can you split your watch time between Frost and random
sweeps of the Hellions? Keep an eye out for anything that looks
promising from Frost."

Illyana nodded again, solemn.

"Doug, find out what you can about Sharon and Marie-Ange. Keep going
through the files, see if you can get any record of those calls to
Shaw. I'll keep trying to hack into Pierce's files. Sam, can you
approach the others discreetly, see if they've learned anything
about Sharon?"

"Why don't you find a way of stopping the kill orders, if you're on
the system?" he asked.

"Um, well, I'm afraid we can't do that," said Kitty, dropping her
eyes and flushing. "Wolvie had me hack into their files once, to get
some info on an old friend of his the club had targeted. I got it,
Wolvie stopped the kill, and I didn't cover my tracks well enough.
They took all the black ops stuff off their systems after that. It's
all done by face-to-face contact, now."

"Oh." Shit. They were dead. He tried not to let it show.

Kitty reached out and took Doug's hand. "That won't happen again.
Doug's covered our tracks better than I ever could. Couldn't have
done it without you, Tiger."

Doug looked up with tears in his eyes. He had to look away.

"Blue notes," he said.

No-one responded. There seemed to be nothing else to say. Illyana
vanished into a stepping disc. Doug and Kitty stood up and embraced
one another. He turned and left on his assigned route.

He cried out when the hand touched him on the back.

"Hey," said Kitty. "Didn't mean to scare you."

"There didn't seem to be any more to say."

"He's holding it together," she said quietly. "He's doesn't have
anything to believe in like we do, he's bed-pissing scared, but he's
holding it together. We really couldn't do it without him. I
wouldn't trust myself, not after what happened the last time."

"I-"

"I was going to do it myself. Haroun. I would have forced myself on
him, but Doug got there first."

"I'm scared."

"I know. Me too. Everything I do, I could slip up, and people would
die."

Her eyes bored into him.

"It's wrong," he said. "What he did is wrong."

"I don't like it either, but it was fucking brave, and we'd still be
nowhere without it. Haroun was the only one who knew how to get onto
the system without being caught."

"I don't know how he can respect himself."

"Well, he fucking can't, if you keep, oh shit."

She looked away, biting her upper lip.

"We're all going to-"

"No," she said, gently. She caught his eye. The fury was gone,
replaced by what he had seen in his mother's eyes so long before.
"We're going to make it. They've lost, they just don't know it. By
summer break, you'll be on your way back home. I know it."

"I'm sorry," he said. "Tell Doug I'm sorry."

"He's sorry too."

She wrapped her arms around him.

"Hug," she said softly.

If he closed his eyes, she might have been Paige.

She released him, gave him a tiny smile, then phased into the bush.
He stood quietly in the bush for a while, then wiped his eyes clear
and went on his way.

[Next: Four Against The World]

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