Ausente sin Culpa ni Presente sin Disculpa | Captura

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Cecilia, searching for any captive or injured innocents, finds something far worse than she'd bargained for. [Warning for violence against women, threats of sexual violence.]

Judging by the bilingual shouts she was now hearing, the Scott-led offensive was well underway. That was good news for Cecilia. She'd found it surprisingly easy to slip away from the group, heading into the cluster of houses when the three others had figuratively kicked down the door. And she wasn't struggling to blend in. Given the firefight, a nervous looking Hispanic woman in street clothes wasn't terribly out of place here.

So far, though, her efforts had been in vain. This gang's stash house was deceptively complex. From the outside, Cecilia assumed a search for captured victims would be easy. A house, even a large one, could only be so big. How many places could there be to hide whatever people this group was trying to hide?

Plenty, apparently. Most houses in Honduras didn't have basements, but this one did, and it was massive. Rooms and closets abounded. This made sense to her now - if your business was predicated on illegal drugs, money and guns, you'd want plenty of hiding spaces - but it was slowing her down. While she'd found plenty of bricks of "product," she'd yet to find a single person. Maybe the pandilleros had been bluffing after all.

A loud bang projected through the house, and she jumped instinctively. "Cálmate, girl." She closed her eyes, steeling herself as she quietly pried open a closet door to see if the hallway in front of it was clear. It was, and so she gently pushed the door open a bit more and did her best at skulking down the corridor.

"Pero si aun me buscas en un rincón de ti se que me encontrara..." The lyrics came softly, more of a distracted mutter than an actual song from the singer. He moved slowly and methodically through the supply room, ignoring the sounds of the battle outside, while he ticked off boxes on a clipboard. Despite his quasi-uniform of combat fatigues and military boots, he looked more than an accountant than a soldier. His heavy black mustache hung down to bracket his thin lips and the light flashed against the lens of his glasses. A functionary, quietly carrying out his job, content that the fighting men outside would take care of business.

The sight of the boots stopped Cecilia in her tracks as she turned a corner. She clapped her hand over her mouth before she could let a loud expletive escape and immediately darted back around the corner, pushing back against the wall. In an instant, her shield materialized tightly around her body, an obvious symbol of her sudden panic. She had to calm down.

Feeling every heartbeat in her chest, she closed her eyes, willing her pulse to slow. When she opened them, the translucent barrier felt slightly bigger, as if it were defying her. Still, she inched back toward the corner, doing her best to peek around it again without being seen.

The man continued his slow circuit around the boxes, still ticking items off his clipboard. As he got closer, he paused, looking up for a moment at the lights before putting down his clipboard. He opened the box and reached in, pulling out what looked like a cured sausage from a rations box. He drew out a little flick knife and leaned against another pallet, carving off a sliver of meat and chewing it with satisfaction.

"Do you know that I was only twelve when I had both of my firsts?" He said, apparently speaking to the air. "I come from a small town on the coast. One of the local whores was Mele; half aboriginal. She sold herself to the men on the fishing boats who didn't have a women. She was... not beautiful. But availability was its own kind of beauty. My friend Carlos' father owned the cannery and a few other businesses. He had money. One day he comes to me and he says 'Raúl, I have 600 pesos.' It was her price. He wanted to use my house while my parents were away at the shop in the city."

Cecilia's heart was in her throat. Either he'd spotted her or he was just a lunatic. Neither scenario was good. Her shield contracted finally, and she took that as a signal to make an exit. Slowly, she tried to make her way back down the hall, willing the floor not to creak and her footsteps to fall silent.

"If you go down that hall, you will die. The door has been prepared, so once you came through it, it has locked." He paused, and chewed a slice of sausage contemplatively. "You see, Carlos negotiated the rate. He would finish and then I would have a turn. Nor in her cunt, of course, but her mouth. She had thick lips; moist, they made me hard. But when Carlos finished, she laughed when I pulled out my prick. She said it was small. She said it was a limp stalk. That was when I stabbed her in the throat. And then pushed inside her. Do you know what a woman's cunt does when she is dying? It contracts. Better than anything."

He got up and put down the sausage. "Those were my firsts. First woman, first life taken. Come out of the shadows. They haven't hidden you."

At the moment when she felt the most threatened she'd felt in her life, Cecilia's shield disappeared. Even though she knew it was always there, always humming, waiting for a strike, she couldn't help but feel slightly abandoned. Its visibility might have helped her.

Still, she had to work with what she was given. She stood, frozen in place, trying to weigh whether he was bluffing or not. Either way, her best bet was biding some time. Cecilia had no reason to believe the X-Men wouldn't make short work of the guards outside.

So she turned around, waiting for a second to see if the shell would resurface before she stepped in front of him with a purposefully neutral look on her face. She averted her eyes from his gaze, figuring it best to play nervous and meek, and said nothing.

"And look at you. A lovely woman. I imagine that you've seen much. Experienced much. Please, come here." He motioned to a chair. "Let us speak. Like civilized people."

Cecilia looked at him, then looked around the room. She needed to stall until the fight outside was done; there was no way they could help her now. And so she nodded. "Sure." She glided down the hall, moving toward the chair, watching him carefully as she stepped. She did not sit down.

"I believe you are a mutant. I would not have guessed it, but the dust fell differently under the light. Such a tiny thing, don't you agree?"

"A small thing," she repeated, her tone one of agreement. "But one that could just as easily be a trick of the eye." He seemed smarter than she'd initially given him credit for. "Unless vision's your gift."

"A gift? You have believed something is a mandate. It is random. Entirely random." He said and smiled. "Take off your clothes."

Cecilia's face grew hot almost instantly, and her eyes narrowed. "Excuse me?" She swallowed, hoping to force down the lump in her throat. "Is that how 'civilized people' speak?" She kept her chin up. "Those were your words."

"This is not a civilized place. But if I have to remove your clothes, I will hurt you doing it." The light skittered over his blade. "So I offer you something less painful."

Cecilia looked down at his blade. Her hand was shaking slightly, but she was trying her hardest not to show her fear or her humiliation. Nothing in their intelligence had prepared her for a fight. Or another person. She had no idea what his powers were, she was poorly armed with a knife of her own, and she was hardly a martial arts expert. A few sessions in the Danger Room had not prepared for this.

But Cecilia was not going to suffer his indignities. And so she looked back up at him, her posture straightening and her eyes meeting his as she made no effort to move. "I came to find and treat your wounded. You let me do that, and I'll leave."

"Our hurt and wounded are not down here. Down here are the tools of our business. By finding your way here, you have interfered. But, I will make you an offer." He stood up, wiping the grease from the blade against his pant leg. "You are old, true, but a handsome woman and a doctor. I will take you as my woman for now. If you prove your worth, you will have the choice of leaving. If you decline, then I will take you now and many hours from now, if satisfied, I will give you a release from the pain that will encompass your future. What could be more civilized?" He said, ending with a bark of laughter.

Cecilia shot up from her chair. That any redness showed in her dark cheeks was a testament to how furious she had become. "You are vile," she spat out at him, her posture straightening subconsciously as she spoke. "And you deserve what's coming to you."

The door was locked. She believed him when he'd said that, and running toward it would only serve to put her in a corner. And she wasn't armed. The noise was only growing outside, shouts in both Spanish and English coming more frequently. The X-Men weren't coming anytime soon. And there was no way she could even press her communicator without drawing too much attention to it.

Which meant her best shot was the knife. Lacking any better plan, she lunged toward him, trying to knock the blade out of his hands.

The knife skittered off her forcefield above her navel, a blow that would have gutted her. But instead of meeting her rush, the man sidestepped and his arm flowed. Like nothing she'd ever seen, his arm flattened as she rushed into him and wrapped around her head shield like a piece of warm taffy.

So. This was his power. His mutation. It was a strange feeling - one that Cecilia had never experienced against her forcefield before. As Raúl's skin began to surround her, she could sense a kind of loose, clammy pressure, even though his body was a good seven inches away from her. It wasn't painful, exactly — not in the way the knife had been — but there was a kind of discomfort she found unsettling, and her motion was restricted.

She did her best to push away from him, starting to shove his skin away from her face.

His other arm wrapped around her chest, his whole body starting to flatten against hers. "There is no escape, Mele. You will die again, as you've died so many times. Crying. Weeping. Begging."