He was of average
height and average weight and average looks, a low level lab technician on the
brand new Sentinel Mark 3 project, an average scientist of average
intelligence, who was just about your usual average nobody.
It was strange
then, that Irene had had an unusually clear vision of him being the very designer
who would launch a new and ultimately deadly version of Sentinel on the
world. The vision had been so clear, in
fact, that it had led Mystique to take instant and decisive action.
It had been a warm
and balmy day in mid-June that Rogue had gatecrashed the house party being held
at his plush new Long Island apartment with the express purpose of stealing his
most valuable notes on the Mark 3 project, notes that would ultimately lead to
a new discovery in Sentinel technology that would consequently never be
discovered.
There had been so
many people there that Rogue had blended into the crowds fairly easily,
although she had begun to think that maybe her choice of dress hadn't been very
appropriate, because a lot of men had ended up staring at her. It was the first time she'd worn a dress
since her days with the X-Men, and she had been ill at ease wearing the simple
yet slightly flirty dress. Nevertheless,
at the time she'd considered it one of the easiest assignments Mystique had
ever handed to her. She'd managed to
slip into Art Rogers' study with complete ease and without attracting anyone's
attention at all.
Irene's vision had
been very precise. The notebook she was
looking for was small, made of black, bound leather, and had the initials
'S:M3' emblazoned in gold pen over the front.
Rogue had only had misgivings when she'd stepped into the room and
discovered that Art Rogers possessed a great many texts. She'd spent fifteen minutes rifling through
the first few bookshelves with no success, when she'd heard footsteps in the
corridor outside. She'd stayed very
still. Surely no one would go into a
boring old study during a party?
Unfortunately, the
door had swung open before she had time to hide herself, and she'd been very
much surprised to find the lank, unimposing frame of Art Rogers himself in the
doorway, holding two jackets in his hand.
She'd been
cornered, caught red-handed.
For some reason,
she'd found herself saying: “Run out of cloakroom space, huh?”
He'd stared at her
from behind ineffectual yet suspicious brown eyes and asked: “Who are you?”
And suddenly the
answer had appeared to her from out of nowhere and she'd known instinctively
what to say. She'd smiled coyly,
seductively, trailed a hand down the front of her red dress and said: “A gift
from the guys back at the lab.”
In every way, it
had been the right thing to say. He'd
looked over her once with growing enlightenment. Then he'd licked his lips.
“From the guys,
huh?” he'd answered huskily, feigning casualness.
“A house-warming
present,” she'd agreed.
She thought he'd at
least want to take some time for the matter to sink in. She couldn't have been more wrong. Instead something had crossed his face, a
dark smile she'd recognised instinctively; he'd thrown the coats aside and
locked the door behind him, then looked back at her with something like
expectancy in his eyes. It had been a
cue that needed no articulation. She'd
needed no other prompting. Unwilling,
but unable to find any other way out, she'd gone to him, pressed herself
against him, undone the top button of his shirt and purred: “Congratulations,”
in a tone she hadn't recognised.
Surprisingly and
somewhat disturbingly, it was an act she had found she was able to perform to
perfection. All the many men she'd
absorbed told her exactly what they wanted from a woman, and when she'd raised
her lips to kiss his, it had been perfunctory, fleeting. He hadn't wanted her kisses.
Instead he'd moved
away from her, pushing all the clutter away from the desk to make room for
her. At that moment something inside her
had balked, disgust, repulsion; but she'd followed his lead anyway, lain back
on the cold hard desk whilst he slipped a long-fingered hand under her dress
and ran it crudely over her thigh, undoing his shirt with the other. It had taken an inhuman effort to keep the
sultry expression on her face and not to push him away, but somehow she'd
managed it. It was only when he'd
finally leaned in to place his mouth on hers that she'd pulled, pulled with all
the strength that she possessed.
Nothing had
happened.
She'd pulled so
hard and nothing had happened.
When it was
finished he'd muttered his thanks, zipped up his pants and left her there in
his study. She'd sat up, trembling, her
mind numb, her body aching in a new and horrible way she hadn’t been able to
identify, that she hadn't wanted to.
It had been so
incredibly easy, so incredibly repugnant, to turn a man into a fool.
Who had been the
worse fool, she thought later?
Her or him?
When she'd got back
and they'd sat in front of the incinerator watching the little black book burn,
Forge had told her that the reason her absorption powers hadn't worked was
probably because the government was now outfitting all of its employees with
the latest in nano-technology - mutant power disrupters, nanomachines that were
injected straight into the bloodstream and that nullified the powers of any
mutant in a ten-metre radius.
He'd heard rumours
about it, but hadn't known it was already in use.
There had been a faintly
admiring tone to his voice as he'd said it.
Rogue had sat there
staring at the fire. For some reason
she'd found herself thinking of Remy, and if there had been one person she
would have gone to now, it would have been him - though she didn't know why. She didn't know him, didn't know where he
was, didn't know if she'd ever meet him again, or if he gave a damn where she
was. But if she could have gone to him
and buried her face in his chest and wept, somehow it would have made all this
better.
Perhaps.
Mystique had looked
at her with a long, appraising stare, as if in some indeterminable way Rogue
had proved herself, not only to Mystique, but to the cause itself.
The look had made
Rogue physically sick.
That night was the
first she'd spend an hour in the shower, and it would not be the last.
* * * * *
Months had passed
since then.
Rogue stood in
front of the mirror and twirled a lock of white hair absently round her right
forefinger. The dress was strapless,
elegant, gracefully contrived of virginal white satin, hugging her breasts and
hips like a second skin. She looked
beautiful, distinguished - she looked like a lady. Maybe three years ago she would have bought
it without a second thought, even if it had bared enough skin to turn her into
a lethal weapon - she would have bought it even then, taken it home and dressed
up in it in the privacy of her own room, stood in front of the mirror and
twirled around like a little girl first discovering her femininity.
She wouldn't buy it
now. She had no one to wear it for, not
even herself - there were only the men whose lives so sordidly intersected with
her own. And she didn't want them to see
her looking like this, looking like the woman she'd always hoped she would be.
She sighed, but
something possessed her to stand a little longer and admire herself. From the cubicle next door, two young women
were giggling, obviously finding their choice of garments amusing. There was something so nostalgic about the
sound that Rogue found herself smiling slightly to herself. At least somewhere on the outside life was
going on regardless; at least someone would still be laughing, even if it
couldn't be her. Regretfully she unzipped
the dress, hung it back on its hanger and slipped into her own plain clothes,
still wordlessly admiring it every now and then. She hadn’t known she could be tempted by such
frivolities anymore.
When she was
dressed she stepped outside the cubicle taking the dress with her as if she
didn't want to let it go. She was being
ridiculous and she knew it, but she couldn't help it.
“Will you be taking
that, ma'am?” asked the cheery salesgirl standing outside the changing rooms.
Rogue smiled
apologetically and handed the dress back with a truly remorseful look on her
face.
“Sorry, but Ah
really don't think it's me,” she said.
The women in the
adjoining cubicle whispered something and giggled again as she left.
Rogue walked out
onto the sidewalk and pulled the collar of her jacket up to shield her face
from the wind. December was unfolding
with brisk, Arctic winds that left people walking along the streets huddled
into themselves. There was no time or strength left for talk. It was truly unsociable weather. Rogue didn't mind the weather so much; she
minded the unsociability even less. She
walked back towards base with the heaviness of expression that one wears when
one is wreathed in their own thoughts.
She was thinking that maybe she should have bought the dress after all -
maybe it would've given her a reason to feel good about herself for a change.
It had been almost
six months to the day since the incident with Art Rogers. In the aftermath of that event she'd gone
through a crisis of sorts; a strange crisis of identity that even she had not
been able to fully fathom herself.
The event had left
her with one vital question: - if even her absorption powers were now useless,
what weapon did she have left? And the
answer had been staring her right in the face.
What had happened with Art Rogers had been an accident, a terrible,
horrible accident, but it had been a fortuitous one nonetheless. Fortuitous because it had uncovered the very
last weapon she had left in her possession - her beauty, her looks, her
mystery, her mystique.
She had a hold over
men and it was a weapon that had uses of its own.
Nevertheless, it
was one she took little joy from.
Now that absorbing
her targets was almost always impossible, she had found herself using this
weapon more and more. Sometimes flirting
with her targets was enough; sometimes it was not and she would have to go
further. It was disgusting and
disturbing but not terribly difficult.
It would have been more difficult if, that first time when she'd
encountered Art Rogers, she had still been a virgin. If that had been the case she would not have
been able to do what she did. But since
it had not been the case, she was now able to create a certain detachment from
her body and from the actual act itself - but it was only a limited form of
detachment because she could never quite escape her body, just as she could
never quite escape the psyches that still haunted her mind.
It was a strange
and unpleasant form of irony that where once she had loathed her ability to
absorb souls, she liked this newfound power over men even less.
She turned a
corner, only to find that the next street was virtually empty. People were tired of fighting the wind and
were escaping into cafés or diners or department stores, or jumping in their
cars and heading towards the safety of home.
The only other people on the sidewalk were two lovers, running in her
direction, laughing, entwined together by a flimsy, fly-away scarf that was
draped about both their shoulders in a futile attempt to ward off the cold.
She only just
managed to dodge them as they raced past, chuckling conspiratorially between
themselves in a fashion that was alien to her, and that she didn't think she
would ever understand.
She wondered about
Remy quite often these days. The first
few months it had been relatively easy to forget him, but now that her
circumstances were entirely different, she had found her mind drifting to him
more and more often. Somehow, throughout
the hard slog of all the intervening years between the dissolution of the X-Men
and this very moment, nothing had felt more real to her than the one night
she'd spent in his company. It had only
been a momentary fling, a meaningless roll in the haystack; and yet compared to
that one single event, everything else that had happened in the past three and
a half years felt like somebody else's very bad nightmare.
Perhaps she had
managed the inevitable and had finally disassociated herself from her own life,
her own mind, and her own inner workings.
It seemed an attractive plausibility except for the fact that she felt
very much alive and very much conscious of everything going on around her,
albeit in a vague and indistinct sort of way.
Not that any of
this particularly mattered. Not
anymore. She had known the morning after
she'd slept with Remy that he had changed her into a creature she barely knew,
and maybe that was why she had difficulty recognising herself. Maybe that was why selling herself to other
men wasn't terribly difficult. Maybe if
Remy had decided to take responsibility for what he'd done to her, maybe if he'd
given her some acknowledgement of his part to play in her corruption she would
have been bothered. But he hadn't, and
she wasn't.
If she had been
bothered, she didn't think she'd be alive anymore.
She stopped
abruptly in the doorway of a fancy patisserie and looked back over her
shoulder. There wasn't a soul in sight,
apart from the couple who were now far off in the distance, still
giggling. She stood a moment, peering warily
down the street before stirring herself and finally moving on.
It wasn't the first
time she'd got the feeling she was being followed. It had happened once or twice before, on odd
occasions over the past couple of months - but there had never been anyone
there to prove that she was being tailed.
Still, as she wandered down the street a little further, she stopped,
feigning interest in the electronics display in a nearby shop window, turned,
backtracked for several yards, and then unexpectedly turned off into an
alleyway. Once there she began walking
very quickly, making her way through the maze of interconnected paths, before
exiting onto a totally different block altogether. It was only then that she felt she might have
shaken off any potential tracker, imaginary or otherwise.
It hadn't escaped
her notice either, that she was quite possibly becoming paranoid.
Maybe Ah am goin' mad after all…
She supposed it
didn’t matter which path she chose to walk from now on. Whichever one she chose, all roads would
inevitably lead back home.
*
When she arrived
back at headquarters, the first person she encountered was Dom on his way to
the kitchen.
“There you are,” he
remarked, the usual slow, indolent grin on his thickset face. “Raven's been
having a fit wondering where you were.”
“Ah was out,” she
replied curtly, shrugging off her duster and hanging it over a nearby peg.
“What, ain't Ah allowed to have some time to myself anymore?”
“I ain't gotta
problem with it,” Dom shrugged. “But you know what Mystique gets like about her
'darling daughter'.” His grin grew wider, showing an indomitable set of
off-white teeth. “The mothering instinct in that woman is enough to scare off
little children. I guess I can kinda
understand why you decided to run off with Xavier's Brady Bunch.”
“Ah did not 'run
off' with them,” Rogue retorted acidly, hands on hips. “Ah made a decision and
Raven accepted it, even if she didn’t approve of it. Sometimes Ah just think she needs to learn
that Ah'm a grown woman and not a kid anymore,” she muttered as a belligerent afterthought.
“Yeah, well, try
telling her that to her face,” Dom remarked with a distasteful smirk. “I'm sure
as hell not gonna. Raven'd string me up
from my ankles if I even said the slightest little thing about her precious
widdle Roguey-Woguey.”
“Gimme a break, Dom,
it's not like Ah ask to be teacher's pet,” she grumbled, brushing past him and
into the kitchen.
“Well, could you at
least suggest to her that St. John and I be given more interesting
assignments?” he probed, following right behind her and flipping on the kettle
switch while she poured herself a glass of water. “You always get all the
exciting jobs. It ain't fair.”
“Ah just do what
Ah'm asked t' do,” she answered stiffly, turning her back on him and lifting
the glass to her lips.
“Yeah, but only for
them, right?” he returned snidely.
“For the X-Men. Don’t deny it. Ever since you came back last year saying
you'd found out some of them were still alive, everyone's known it. Even Raven knows it. You stick with us 'cos you think one day
we'll be strong enough to break them
free. Isn't that right?”
She stared at her
face in the limpid pool of water, her mouth hard, her eyes pellucid and
unblinking.
“So what if Ah am?”
she muttered darkly.
The kettle had
boiled, but he ignored it.
“C'mon, Rogue,
they're a dead-loss,” he reasoned, frustrated. “I think that fact was proved
when old cueball was killed while he was preachin' love and peace to the
frickin' military. Statics and mutants can't live in harmony, and his death
proved that beyond doubt. Dammit, get a
clue Rogue!”
She was bristling;
the hairs on the back of her neck were actually standing on end.
“You have no right
to talk about Xavier like that,” she growled through gritted teeth, but he
merely laughed dissonantly.
“Face it, Rogue,
Xavier fucked up. The X-Men fucked up. That's why they're in concentration camps -
if of course they are in camps at all, since you never did satisfactorily
explain just how you came by that
information. Is there any reason for
that, Rogue?” She could feel him suddenly step up behind her, his face close to
her ear as he added softly, menacingly: “Could it be you're still in contact
with the X-Men?”
She could hardly
believe how close to the mark he'd truly come.
Before she could think she slammed the glass back onto the counter and
rounded on him.
“How dare you insinuate -!”
“Why? Would it be so hard to believe? You
survived, didn’t you? So did Forge. Well, why not someone else?”
He was close, that
expansive, sarcastic grin filling his face, and she glared at him, refusing to
back down…
“If that was true,”
she hissed at him, bringing her face to within an inch of his, “Then Ah
wouldn’t be here right now, talkin' to you.”
She whipped away
from him, picking up her glass and walking towards the window, but he wouldn’t
back down.
“C'mon, Rogue, I'm
telling you all this for your own good!” he continued irritably from behind
her. “If you think you can live in some fantasy world where the X-Men are gonna
come and save the day once again, you can forget it!”
“You don’t know
anythin' that could happen!” she yelled back breathlessly. “Not even Irene
does, otherwise we'd be free from this fucked up anti-mutant dystopia we're
livin' in right now!”
“Fuck the future!”
he spat disdainfully. “What matters is the here and now! And here and now, the X-Men are either dead
or incarcerated without a hope of ever breaking free! Xavier's ethos doesn’t mean jack-shit in this
world and you know it! The more you
pretend it does, the crazier you're gonna get.
And believe me, Rogue, with what Mystique's got planned for you, you're
gonna be needin' your head, you're gonna be needin' all the balls you've
got! Screw all this hippie bullshit
you're still buying into!”
She swung round,
her eyes blazing green fire.
“What d'you mean… what's Mystique's got planned for me?!”
He faltered, his
mouth opening and closing, before he finally finished: “Look, I'm doing you a
favour. Forget the X-Men, forget Xavier
and his crazy ideology and just think about the bigger picture for a second. It's dog eat dog out there and it's either
kill or be killed. Rogue, for God's sakes just--”
“I think you've
said quite enough, Dominic.”
At the cool, deep
and faintly irascible voice, the two turned to see none other than Raven
standing in the doorway. Dominic went
pale, putting up his hands in self-defence.
“Mystique, it isn't
what you're thinking, I wasn’t going to tell her…”
“Perhaps not,”
Raven raised an eyebrow archly. “But sooner or later your idiocy would have
made things very clear to her indeed.”
Dominic went from pale
to very red. He dropped his hands.
“Sorry,” he
muttered churlishly. “But somebody needs to get it through to her that the
X-Men are yesterday's news, Mystique.
This ain't their world anymore.”
“I'm sure Rogue is
quite capable of making her own judgements,” Raven informed him coldly,
stepping over the threshold and into the kitchen. “In the meantime, I want you
and St. John to make preparations for the new assignment. I will
give Rogue a briefing on the role she is to play, not you. Now go.”
For a moment,
Dominic looked as if he was about to protest; but then he decided against it,
and, passing a last glare in Rogue's direction, he left, shutting the kitchen
door behind him. When his footsteps had
died away, Raven gave Rogue that cold, penetrating stare that was usually
enough to unnerve even the stoutest of hearts; but Rogue was by now well used
to it, and returned the stare unflinchingly.
“What did he mean?”
she demanded hotly, her temper flaring as she met that frosty stare. “What have
you got planned for me?”
“Where were you
this afternoon?” Raven asked coldly instead.
“It's none of your
business!”
“You are my
daughter and I wish to protect you,” Raven persisted in the same flat, even
tone. “Now tell me where you were.”
She hated her, she hated her…
“Ah was in town,
and Ah was shopping!” she spat fiercely.
“I see you didn’t
buy anything.”
“Maybe Ah just
wanted to see what Ah'd look like in a nice dress, even if Ah didn’t have
anyone to wear it for,” she found herself shouting - she'd never planned to
divulge anything so personal, but she was so angry she couldn’t help it from
spilling out. “Why? Is it a crime now or
somethin'?”
“Of course
not. But I ask merely because I don’t
want you to be endangered. You are
precious to me, Rogue. Do you not
understand that?”
Rogue pouted, her
anger unwillingly tempered by Mystique's words.
There was nothing motherly or affectionate about Raven at all, not in
her looks or her actions, but she had her own brand of love, twisted though it was,
and despite it all, Rogue knew that in her own perverse fashion, Mystique did love her.
“Ah took all the
necessary precautions,” she said in a lower voice. “You don’t need to worry
about me. Like you said, Ah'm a big girl
now, Ah can make my own judgements. Or
don’t you trust me?”
Raven's gaze was
clear, unwavering.
“I trust you,
daughter,” she returned mildly. “But nevertheless, Avalanche is right. You cling to Xavier's old teachings with a
stubbornness that is quite unwarranted.
Don’t misunderstand me,” she added quickly when Rogue was about to
protest, “I don’t blame you for this.
When you awoke from your coma, it was as if you'd awoken from one world
into another, entirely alien one. The
world changed rapidly while you slept, and you never witnessed it. It is natural that you should find difficulty
in letting go.” She paused, walked to the table, drew up a chair and sat,
indicating for Rogue to do the same.
After a moment's hesitation, Rogue relented and did so.
“Nevertheless,”
Mystique continued gravely, “the world has
changed, Rogue. Drastically. And one day, you will need to accept it
fully. In the meantime, I need to know
that you still believe in our cause.
That you still believe in fighting for mutant freedom.”
“You know Ah do,” Rogue replied heatedly. “Do
you think Ah could stand and watch the rest of mutantkind bein' treated like
shit and do nothin'? Do you think Ah
could sit still when the X-Men could be waitin' out there for someone to--”
“Forget about the
X-Men for now,” Raven interjected calmly. “It is enough to know that, if they
are indeed still alive, and if they were free now, they too would be fighting
against oppression as the Brotherhood now does.
Agreed?”
Rogue nodded. That at least was certain, and yet somehow
she felt that if the X-Men still existed, free and as a whole once more, things
would still be different… And yet she
couldn’t pinpoint how.
“Before equality
there has to be freedom,” she murmured slowly, remembering something Xavier had
once said. “If there is freedom to make a choice, all else can follow…”
“Yes,” Mystique
nodded. “Perhaps our ideals may differ, Rogue, in that you may believe in
equality after freedom, and I may believe in mutant supremacy after
freedom. Whatever the case, the material
point is this - freedom must come first.” She settled back in her chair and
gazed at Rogue with clear, appraising eyes. “I'm glad that we can, at least,
see eye to eye on this point, Rogue. It
means that I don’t have to worry so much about what I am going to ask you to do
next.”
“And what's that?”
Rogue asked warily. Recently Raven's
demands had become risky, and she had an inkling they were going to be riskier
yet…
Raven, however,
said nothing. Instead she reached inside
her pocket and brought out a newspaper clipping, passing it to Rogue with a
confidential air. It was a partially
faded picture of a vaguely familiar man in military uniform, who was shaking
hands with the President. He was a
middle-aged man, in his fifties, with a bold brow and noble, distinguished
features. His face was proud, almost
lionine.
Rogue studied him a
moment, frowning.
“General Kincaid…”
she read the caption, recalling the name indistinctly, though she couldn’t
remember where she'd first heard it.
“Leader of an
anti-mutant group called the Friends of Humanity,” Raven informed her briskly.
“He is an extremely influential man, and even has the ear of the
President. He personally funds several
anti-mutant agencies, but his brainchild - his baby, if you like - is the
Friends of Humanity. It was founded at
first to advocate 'racial purity' in all public sectors - education,
employment, health, even in government.
They started out merely as a small but vocal group, and over time it was
their campaigning that brought
anti-mutant feeling to the fore; and an anti-mutant government into power. In many ways, you could say that it was
Kincaid's fault that the Xavier mansion was attacked on that day three years
ago.”
Rogue looked up
sharply, an icy flame suddenly spurting to life in her chest; her throat had
gone cold.
“Kincaid is an
eloquent speaker,” Raven continued matter-of-factly. “He managed to convince
the President and his administration that the only way to deal with
super-powered mutants was to use military force. He is a great supporter of Bolivar Trask's
work, and many believe he spearheaded Ahab's Hound program. That man,” and she indicated to the news
clipping again, “is the reason why you and I are the way we are today.”
Rogue swallowed and
looked back down at the paper, at the noble, smiling face, so open, so fatherly somehow; someone to look up to,
someone to believe in, someone to trust… And yet there was something about the
lines on his face, the thinness of his mouth that suggested an expression of
thinly veiled arrogance and contempt, as if his countenance could change from
something benign to malignant in a second…
She raised her eyes
to Mystique's again, asked quietly: “And the job Dom was talkin' about… The one y'all want me to do…?”
Raven nodded; her
eyes glinted in the sunlight.
“Yes. Kill him.”
*
A numbness seemed
to take over Rogue. For the next couple
of weeks or so, she spent every waking moment preparing and training for this
assignment, this fateful task that seemed to weigh heavily upon her shoulders from
the moment it was given to her.
She did not know
why she agreed to do it. She could very
well have refused it - Mystique, after all, was more qualified for
assassinations than she was. In fact, it
was almost an unspoken rule that Raven take the assassination jobs - the kill
was something she was a master in.
However, Rogue sensed that this was a test; that Raven was testing both
her mettle and her commitment to the cause.
And Rogue had accepted it because in a way, in killing Kincaid she would
be testing herself. The ultimate
question was, what would she be willing to sacrifice in order to free her kind
from the bonds of slavery? How far would
she be willing to go? She had already
crossed one boundary, in seducing her targets for her own ends; but could she
kill them as well?
Could she kill in
order to free those she loved most?
Would killing
Kincaid have any direct bearing on freeing the X-Men at all, and if so, was
their freedom worth the death of another, however corrupt he may be?
The days passed cold
and dreary, windy and rainy; squalls blew over New York City with an almost
unnatural force. And then, the day
before the assignment was to begin, the rain stopped, the winds dissipated, and
all fell silent. To Rogue, it gave the
baleful impression of the calm before the storm.
The mission was to
take place under cover of night; Rogue spent the daytime preparing her
equipment, or idly pottering round base, trying to find an inner sense of
equilibrium she did not possess. By
evening, her stomach was churning listlessly; she dressed in her black bodysuit
with the dignified reverence of the priest donning his vestments. When this was done, she unclasped the
butterfly pendant from about her neck and dropped it inside the inner breast
pocket of her suit - over time it had become more than just a good luck
charm. To part with it was almost
unthinkable, nothing short of sacrilegious to her. If she was ever going to die, she wanted that
pendant with her. She was going to die
with at least one part of the past with her, and even if she could never go
back to that past, she was going to take it with her to the grave.
At last, she was
ready.
When she got to the
front door, Mystique was waiting. She
said no word, made no sign of encouragement, but silently handed Rogue the gun
that was to kill Kincaid. There was one
full magazine in there, enough to kill him eight times over if such a thing
were possible.
She hoped she would
only have to use one of those bullets.
As she left, she
looked back only once, and to her surprise she saw Irene hovering in the living
room doorway, staring out at her with those blind eyes, giving the eerie sense
of plumbing the depths of Rogue's soul.
Irene never saw her off before missions, she never said goodbye - this
had to be important…
A question was
forming on Rogue's lips, unbidden…
Will Ah be comin' back?
But the question
remained unspoken and thus forever unanswered.
Irene said nothing,
not even goodbye, and a split second later Rogue had turned, stepped out into
the yawning blackness of the night to face yet another unturned page in her
destiny.
*
Go to Chapter 7
: Go to Chapter 9