Sanguinicity - Postscript

[x-gambit.livejournal.com]

So, what did happen to Remy?



How long had it been? A day? Two? The worst part about spending years as an operative is that when you got caught, if they didn't just put a bullet behind your ear, you knew what was on the menu. The first trick to interrogation is to soften the target up with a little sensory deprivation; in this case, time dilation. Make them lose track of hours and days - irregular sleeping cycles, using drugs to wake them up an hour after going to sleep and pretend they've been out for a full night. Knowing the tricks didn't make them less effective - it just gave you something to think about in the darkness.

Remy wasn't afraid. However, his lack of fear didn't come from bravery. He'd come to terms with the fact that one day he wouldn't come home from a mission. While no one wanted to die, the sins of his past life had taken away the normal argument that he didn't deserve it to happen to him. If it came down to it, there were always ways for a determined man to kill himself before breaking under torture, unless his captors were very good and very careful.

Focus on something else; anything else.

How had they tricked them? The mission was a set-up from the very start. It was someone smart, well trained in the operational side and familiar with their methods. Someone who could anticipate what steps they'd take and carefully bait each one with the information they needed to get deeper and deeper in. As he'd said a thousand times, X-Force depended on anonymity for protection. So long as they were a faceless group that appeared in the open only at the end of the job and disappeared again, they were untouchable. But once you knew that they were out there, it wouldn't take long to connect the dots back to Snow Valley.

Belladonna and the Black Court? No, if it had been his ex-wife, he'd already be dead and the target would have been Emma first. Fontaine's Hellfire Club connection seemed like it would be the obvious connection, but from his experience, the Hellfire Club was too fractious to coordinate something like this.

The most likely explanation was Strucker's old organization being more operational than they had thought. Remy pulled himself up into a sitting position, leaning against the dank concrete wall. His wrists and ankles were zip-tied together with good, thin metal restraints. It would have been a second with his powers to blow them off, but something was blocking him. He guessed a chemical inhibitor; suppression technology was still very expensive and specialized, but there were any number of drugs that made concentrating on focused mutant abilities difficult to impossible to do.

So, the working hypothesis had to be Strucker's people. When they'd dropped the building on the Baron, the survivors must have started digging immediately. From encounters with Swarm and Rumlow, they'd be able to build at least a basic outline of what they were dealing with. Enough to know that someone sniffing around the Baron's old resources could be the same people who buried him in his lab. Use a new twist on a honey trap with Fontaine...

"Merde." Remy said sourly. A stalking horse. He thought that Fontaine's bile was a little bit too intense about the Baron. She was a perfect trap for his enemies; ruined by him on paper, well known for her hatred of the man.

"Remy must be getting old." He muttered, and shook his head. Somewhere, Wisdom was cursing him for being so stupid. He'd taken certain things at face value because they'd dug up the connection with Fontaine, and never thought that they were getting led. Stupid mistake.

And now- he shuddered slightly. Just because Remy wasn't afraid of dying did not mean he looked forward to what was likely to come. He'd been tortured before and been a torturer, and had no illusions that the pain coming would be anything different. He had some tricks, and could hold out for a while. If they got close, there were a few truly nasty tricks he had to end himself before they could make him give up the rest of the team. But it was going to be an eternity of hell getting there. His only hope was if ego took over, and they decided they wanted to punish him first.

Time provided opportunities. Gave the opposition chances to make mistakes. People intent on revenge took stupid risks.

If not. If they acted like professionals, they would torture him until he screamed. And then until he talked. And if he couldn't end himself first, they would wring him dry of every last piece of information before they killed him. That couldn't happen.

The door opened and Remy squeezed his eyes shut against the light. He was roughly grabbed under the arms and hauled painfully up. His feet dragged behind him as they hauled him down the hallway, gripping his upper arms as his shoulders wrenched painfully, holding up his weight. Slowly, his eyes adjusted to the light, and he was pulled through a pair of doors into what looked like a small, but well appointed personal lab. At the far end, there was a small communal area, where several figures sat. His vision swam as he was dropped roughly on to a metal stool, barely able to keep from falling.

"Where are the rest?" A lab-coated man stood with his back to Remy, operating a microscope with apparent absorption.

"This was the only one we captured, sir. We have identified Emma Frost and Douglas Ramsey from the New York Hellfire Club White Court as the masterminds of the mission. Ramsey has a cover job at one of her companies. La Countessa Fontaine is trying to uncover the identities of the others she met." The room finally collapsed into focus, and Remy was able to identify the speaker; Brock Rumlow, the mercenary commander that they'd tangled with over the Satan's Claw and in New Orleans. Countessa Fontaine, Andrea Schmidt and her brother Andreas sat on a sofa taking in his report.

"Interesting. Always Americans involved." The man's German was off; off-fashioned in a way, like a grandfather who still tried to use the slang from his youth. He turned from the microscope, and Remy bit back a yell.

The man's face was a dripping, ruined mass. Bits of torn flesh and muscle stood out starkly against flashes of bone, and a pair of fevered eyes stared out from the oozing mask of blood. It was as if someone had taken a blade to the man's face, razoring off flesh until the entire face was laid bear. Blood flowed slowly and thickly, congealing and dripping in fat clumps to the lab coat and the floor. He smiled, a truly repulsive movement of muscles and tendons that brought on more blood and twisted the mockery of the face.

"This one will be the start. Madam Hydra, you have your trained telepaths -" In his mangled German, the word literally translated into 'brain-miners', which did not soothe Remy's concerns. "We want to get as much intact from this one."

"Yes Baron."

"What?" The head whipped around, spraying blood across the room. The man moved with viper speed, reaching Fontaine before she could blink and hauling her up by her throat. The ruined face was inches from hers, and Remy imagined he could feel the intensity of his mad eyes on her. "What did you say, Madam Hydra?"

"Yes-" She choked. "Yes, Obergruppenführer Schmidt." She dangled in his grip for a long moment before he released her and stalked away.

"Good. My good friend Baron Von Strucker is only to be mentioned in honoring him. I do not intend to imitate him. I will only be who I am!" He all but strieked the last words, and a current of fear ran through the others. After a moment, he subsided. "Unfortunately, my Schutzstaffel is long dust, and with it, my rank. I must consider this."

He paused, and his attention went back to Remy. "Take him away and begin the questioning. Report to me what you find. The rest of the rats have scurried away, but they remain on the fringes, looking in. I want them in mind as soon as possible." Remy was roughly pulled from the chair and hauled back out the doors. It was ironic that torture sounded better than another minute under that mad, dripping gaze. Who was that man? And more importantly, what did he have planned? It was a question that Remy would turn over in his mind until the pain finally blotted it out.