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Secret Burdens
Chapter Seventeen: Storming the Castle

“This was new territory. This was fear. And not for herself.”

* * *

“Let’s go, Shadowcat. We got all the information we’re going to get out of this place,” Kurt whispered behind Kitty as she backed herself up against one of the concrete walls of the underground winding corridors they had been exploring the last half hour. He lined up behind her, glancing behind them to make sure the two Army privates walking the East corridor didn’t turn the corner into their hallway. He breathed in relief after a few seconds of receding footsteps, thankful their calculations of the shift change in guard duty weren’t inaccurate. The dimmed lights situated above their heads cast an almost greenish tint to the narrow, concrete passages, the scent of limestone and the faint hint of gasoline permeating the stone around them. Kurt scrunched his nose distastefully.

Kitty stilled her gradual slide across the wall to turn her determined gaze on him briefly. “The schematics I saw place the cells of the mutant victims just below the hallway ahead of us,” she hissed pleadingly. At Kurt’s nervous gaze she sighed and reached a hand to his shoulder, squeezing lightly in reassurance. “Don’t worry,” she spoke softly, her flippant smile returning to her features, “We worked out the shift duty fine. We still have four minutes before the new team reaches us. We need to be fast but that’s enough time for me to phase through the floor just to get a quick look. I want to give Storm something on their health status, make sure there’s still someone left for us to rescue.” Her endearing face and light touch only partially settled him.

Glancing back down the hallway, Kurt sighed, considering the risks and the payoffs of their slim window of opportunity. It sure would be helpful to know the status of the five taken mutants.

“I’m going, Nightcrawler. Take watch.” Kitty turned away before he could breathe a word.

“Shadowcat!” he hissed in a whisper, whipping his head back around and reaching his hand out toward her, but she was already slinking down the twelve feet of hallway that lead to their destination. He cursed under his breath and followed silently.

They had to be quick. Kitty was right when she estimated the four minute advantage against the base’s nightly shift change in guard duty. They had managed to rely mostly on Kurt’s teleporting to get inside, and Kitty’s phasing once they had breached the underground bunker. Before they even attempted entering the base, Kitty had hacked into the facility’s security feed through the Blackbird’s system. They had mapped out all the locations of cameras and once inside, had been able to avoid detection so far.

The first goal was to find the main security console and learn as much about their guard stations and defense systems as possible. It had been relatively easy for Kitty to partially phase through the floor above the room and take pictures. Once the two X-men had sifted through enough pictures and recordings they had figured out a path through the corridors that would lead them to the holding cells of the captured mutants. It was their last stop before taking the discovered information back to base.

“Shadowcat, stop,” Kurt urged, even as he followed her to the floor of the stone corridor, squatting in front of her, his tail twitching behind him. “We’ve infiltrated far enough, we know where they’re being held. Now we need to get out.”

Kitty pursed her lips. “I’m not leaving until we get what Storm needs.” Then she smirked mischievously and Kurt raised his eyebrows at her. “Hold my ankles.”

“What?” But he only had a second of confusion before Kitty ducked down and phased through the floor. Kurt’s hands shot out to catch her ankles and hold her in position, rolling his eyes as he glanced back down the corridor to make sure it stayed empty.

The floors in this section were thicker than the ones above the main security room, an added security attempt to better hold the powerful mutants below. Kitty flipped her hair back as she came through the underside of the ceiling underneath her, grabbing a hold of the pipes running the length of the ceiling to crane herself upward and get a better view of the room below.

There were five individual holding cells in the room, each surrounded with heat-resistant, reinforced acrylic glass walls. Everything in the cells could be seen, but the glass was built to withstand tons of pounds of pressure without shattering. Kitty recognized the faces of the five occupants as the captured mutants Shrap had been experimenting on. They were each dressed in their military service khakis, either pacing the floors or sitting atop their small bunks. The one female captive was curiously standing in the middle of her cell, eyes closed and breathing evenly. Kitty’s eyes narrowed in confusion. When none of the captives showed any immediate signs of distress or injury she turned her attention to the rest of the people playing out below her.

She took a moment to look around and found three men in white coats milling around the lab area just outside the cells. From where she was, Kitty could see the leather and metal restraints attached to two chairs in the middle of the lab. She swallowed down her burning anger at the sight. The lab was filled with the scent of disinfectant and the low humming and beeps of the machines lining the walls was eerily steady to her ears. Standing on either side of the only door to the large room were two armed sentries. Taking everything into account, she swept her gaze back to the mutants in their cells.

Kitty froze.

The woman in her cell was looking directly up at Kitty, her bright snake eyes piercing even across the distance between them. Swiftly, the woman’s unnaturally slim tongue dipped out to taste the air and slipped back in. She still did not move.

Kitty gulped and glanced at the scientists and guards in the room, breathing a sigh of relief that they had not noticed her yet. She looked back to the captive, biting her lip as her heart thudded in her ears. Slowly, she put a finger to her lips, smiling in a way she hoped would be reassuring to the woman.

The woman blinked. For a second, Kitty thought the woman had understood her silent motion of aid. Then, there was the sliver of a smile that crossed her face before she opened her mouth. “Intruders!,” she yelled, her gaze never leaving Kitty’s.

It happened in seconds. It happened before Kitty even knew what had happened. There was a flurry of motion on the floor below, the scientists racing to the door, the two guards swinging their guns toward her as she grasped through the ceiling at Kurt’s hands, yelling “Pull me up! Pull me up!” But her grip on the pipes slipped as the rush of bullets flew past her and instead she fell flailing through the concrete, Kurt falling through the ceiling with her as he still held her. She screamed, the floor rushing to her before Kurt had grabbed her shoulders mid-air, teleporting them to the far end of the lab. They hit close to the tiled floor, Kitty dropping on top of Kurt, the force of their previous fall knocking the wind from him as she landed on his chest. Kurt’s head had bounced painfully on the ground below. They had only a moment’s advantage as the guards blinked away their confusion and focused their bullets back on the duo.

There was a sudden and sharp siren ringing through the facility. Kitty whipped her head up to catch site of the two Army privates just as they fired.

“Nightcrawler!” She grabbed his chest and yanked him off the ground by his uniform. She wasn’t fast enough. One of the bullets grazed his arm before her phasing ability could transfer. The rest of the bullets passed through them easily as he howled in pain, shifting quickly to teleport them directly behind the guards.

They worked in tandem before the guards could even whip around. Kitty released Kurt and dropped down as her kick swept one guard off his legs. He fell to the floor, grunting and Kitty swung at his temple, knocking him unconscious. Next to her, Kurt had already reached his uninjured arm around the other’s neck and twisted, turning his lithe body toward the ground and snapping the man’s neck as he came down over Kurt’s knee.

Their breathing was loud even over the blaring alarm siren. Kitty looked down at the guard at Kurt’s feet, swallowing a shaky breath as the sweat beaded down her neck. She looked back to Kurt. “Nightcrawler…” she trailed off silently.

Kurt was bent over, one hand clamped over the bleeding of his arm. His yellow eyes found hers and didn’t blink. “We need to go. Now”

She nodded absently. “Yeah. Yeah, let’s go.” She could hear the thudding of footsteps reaching the lab but couldn’t tear her eyes from Kurt. He grabbed at her arm, and she felt the familiar tug of teleportation just as her eyes lifted to find the woman still standing behind the cell walls, smiling.

She realized they were already lost.

* * *

“We’re coming up on them. Everyone strap in.” Ororo’s order rang through the cockpit with a hard resolution. She pulled her own strap across her chest and fastened herself to the pilot seat, hearing the responding clicks of everyone’s belts. Her eyes moved to find Logan’s. He was already watching her from his seat beside her.

It had only taken them minutes from receiving Nightcrawler’s distress call to rally the whole team into the hanger and on board their second Blackbird. Ororo had the aircraft built to the same speculations as the original bird once she had been named the head of Charles’ estate. The X-men’s numbers were growing with the progression of the students, and as much as Ororo loathed the idea of bringing children into a war, she understood that there were those that wanted to stand with them. Kitty, Peter and Bobby had been at the front of that issue since their unorthodox initiation into the fighting when Striker hit the mansion those years ago. Warren’s introduction to the human-mutant conflict was just as jarring and he had been adamant about his place on the team since their encounter on Alcatraz. It was not in Ororo’s rights, she felt, to deny them the chance to protect themselves and others in a fight they were already a part of.

But Ororo was not naïve enough to think that she could keep the children of the Institute safe without the solid backing of the X-Men. And with both Scott and Jean gone, the two foremost leaders of the group, it was a childish illusion to think she had the power alone to face the kind of dangers that threatened her kids. It was with a heavy reluctance that Ororo first opened official training as X-Men to Kitty, Peter, Bobby and Marie before. Now, with Marie off the team and Warren in her place, she realized that the X-Men’s resources were in dire need of expansion. With the growth of the team came the inclusion of a second Blackbird, an overhaul of the entire security system based on the tactics used by Striker to first infiltrate their underground base, and an expansion in the training protocols and simulations of their Danger Room.

It was in this new revamped Danger Room that Ororo and Logan first got the alarm sent by Nightcrawler. They had been practicing defense strategy when the computer system suddenly, and without warning, blacked out. The virtual screens around them had then flashed to the satellite image tracking system of the original Blackbird, the blaring shriek of the alarm siren blanketing the whole room. Ororo had quickly called off the training session and started up her comm. system, picking up Nightcrawler on the other line, even as she and Logan raced to the locker room to grab their gear.

Logan gathered the rest of the team as Ororo started up the Blackbird and quickly explained the situation to the X-Men once everyone was on board. The jet was airborne only minutes after the distress signal came through. Ororo didn’t even have time to let the fear sink in, didn’t have time to wonder about the extent of Nightcrawler’s injury. There was no room here for anything less than calculated and swiftly executed leadership.

But when she met Logan’s eyes, there was a dread settling on her bones she had never felt before. Never had she entered into a conflict with this kind of trepidation, this kind of hesitance. And it wasn’t until she realized that it was because of Logan, because there was more to be lost this time, because she wasn’t ready to give him up yet, that the panic truly began to hit her. She tore her gaze from Logan’s and turned her attention back to the controls in front of her, switching the autopilot setting off and feeling the force of the jet as she sped them closer to Shadowcat and Nightcrawler.

She shook her thoughts away. Logan was an extremely capable and enduring warrior. She had more reason to fear for the others’ safety than she did for Logan’s. And yet…

“Shadowcat!” Ororo called out over the comm. system. The answering “Ma’am” over the radio was alert, but even then Ororo could sense the quiver in Kitty’s voice.

“Are you and Nightcrawler safe?”

Everyone had been linked into their own comm. units in their earpieces, anxiously awaiting the status of their groundside teammates.

“We’ve made it back to the Blackbird and the stealth systems are active but it won’t be long before troops find us. I can’t lift off without alerting the anti-aircraft sensors. We’re grounded until you arrive.” There was sudden static on the end of the line before Kitty continued. “How far out are you?”

Hank glanced at the navigation screen. “ETA is four minutes.”

The heavy weight of the plane’s controls rumbled softly in Ororo’s hands and she gripped them harder. “What defenses can we expect?”

There was heavy and shaking breathing on the other end of the line before Kitty came back on. “They aren’t equipped for much resistance but now that the base is on alert, you’ll have trouble landing without taking out their three mounted turrets first. I can’t get you guys on ground or inside until you take them out. Two on the north entrance, one on the south.” There was heavy breathing again. “After that, about…three platoons I’d say.”

“I have the turrets in sight, Storm.” Hank alerted their leader as he watched the indicators on the radar screen.

“Angel,” Storm called out, glancing back momentarily to catch Warren’s nod, “I am opening the hatch. We need to take out those turrets before I land the bird. Take Peter. You two have the south and I have the north.”

She reached a hand out to the door controls. There was the heavy shift of the metal door and then the wind whipping through the cabin of the jet as the bay door lowered. Warren was already at the back of the aircraft, his arms linked under Peter to grip the man’s shoulders tightly to his chest.

“Beast,” Ororo started, and Hank was already reaching for the co-pilot controls.

“I have it,” he answered, his deep voice rumbling even through the loud and thrashing wind.

Ororo didn’t waste a second, her eyes blanking white faster than Hank had ever seen them. “Go, go, go!”

Warren pulled his wings into himself and dove through the opened bay door, dive-bombing at breakneck speed before shooting his wings out and catching the currents, twisting sharply over the base’s outer field and toward the first of the turrets mounted to the building’s edge. Peter’s metal casing fluidly covered him just as Warren released his grip of the man and Peter became, quite-literally, a human cannonball, curling into himself and slamming through the turret’s defense shielding with the velocity of Warren’s dive.

Warren could feel the heat of the resulting explosion as he flew closely over, shielding his eyes with one arm and shifting his wings to turn himself back around to pick up Peter. Coming in closer to the edge of the building, Warren squinted his eyes to see through the smoke and caught the sound of gunfire just as he spotted Peter through the debris of the ruined rooftop. There were two sentries firing at Peter’s metal-cased form, the bullets bouncing off harmlessly.

Flying in close, Warren swept between two collapsing columns and slammed into the forms of the two men, sending them flying into the crumbling walls and effectively knocking them cold. Peter waved a hand through the smoke, his metal shields rescinding as he caught sight of Warren landing close by. There were flames dancing around the ruined machinery of the turret. The two X-Men caught each other’s gaze and nodded, both reaching out their arms to take flight once more and rejoin the group. Above their heads, the clouds were already darkening and wind whipping mercilessly.

Inside the cockpit of the Blackbird, Ororo pulled in a deep breath, reaching out to the sky as the air filled her lungs. Her hair crackled with electricity, the air around her suddenly heavy and wet with the smell of ozone. Outside the jet’s windows, the X-Men could see the swirling gale of grey clouds gathering over the north end of the base, even against the dark of the night sky. Flashes of light peppered the growing storm, building in frequency and strength, while a deep, booming roll of thunder shuddered through the plane. Logan could feel the vibrations through his grip on his chair.

While Peter and Warren took out the first turret, Ororo sent out bursts of lightning toward the two remaining guns on the north side of the building, exploding the turrets on impact. Shrapnel burst through the walls of the turret’s shielding, blowing out a large portion of the roof. The explosions echoed through the air, and from the jet overhead, the X-Men could see the slow crumbling of the roof’s concrete onto the top floor. They knew it would take much more force to pierce the underground floors of the base’s bunker. But by collapsing the roof and taking out the anti-aircraft defenses, they could force an evacuation of the building, effectively drawing out the mutant captives and their militant captors.

As soon as Ororo released the weather from her control, her eyes dimmed back to blue and she blinked quickly, grasping at the pilot controls once more. “Alright, team,” her voice resonated through the plane, “ready yourselves for ground combat.”

She lowered the Blackbird to one of the surrounding fields. “Shadowcat, Nightcrawler, report in.”

There was a crackling before Kurt’s deep accent filled their ears. “We’re a few hundred meters south of your position, exiting the Blackbird. We see Angel and Colossus. Rendezvousing at the southern entrance. Troops are coming out in heavy numbers by you.”

There was the heavy jostle of the jet landing and in an instant, the team inside, Logan, Hank and Bobby, had unstrapped and amassed at the open bay door, waiting for Ororo’s orders. Pulling herself from the pilot’s chair, she put a hand to the comm. at her ear. “Alright, Team Alpha, you hold the south entrance. We have the north. Get those mutants out alive. This is first and foremost a rescue mission. If you encounter hostile resistance…,” her eyes instantly found Logan’s. He was ready and waiting. She says the word and he will follow. His nod tells her that he will always follow her, always have her back. The sudden extension of his adamantium claws tells her he won’t let anyone else at her back. She finds a strength in herself that she revels in. “Lethal force is authorized. Keep each other alive. Team Omega out.”





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