"Thank you for your co-operation, Agent Wisdom," the Interpol Task Commander Peter Caranowski said, shaking Pete's hand.

"Not at all," said Pete. "It's just lucky that nobody was seriously hurt, unfortunately the bastards got away."

"I can't believe the gall," Commander Caranowski sighed. "A terrorist organisation like Black Air, right under our noses. The cheek of it." Pete felt bad for the guy, knowing the amount of paperwork that was needed. The Byron Agency had extracted their people in the confusion and the medics were looking after Maverick and Lydia. Pete also knew that there would be trouble, seeing as he was pretending to be an agent of SHIELD and as soon as they checked him out, they'd know he was lying. Then Caranowski would really be in trouble, but by then it would be too late. He always knew that spare badge would come in handy some day.

"We'll get them," Wisdom said. "Nobody does that to our people and gets away with it. I'm just glad you know Lydia, otherwise we'd have had a devil of a time explaining it."

"Well, that badge carries a lot of clout too," Caranowski said. "I hope to get in to SHIELD one day myself."

"I'm sure they'll want to speak to you at some point," Wisdom agreed and he looked as the ambulance driver gave him a thumbs up. "I'll accompany my people to the hospital, but if you need me, contact SHIELD and they'll put you through."

"I'll be in touch," said Caranowski and Pete climbed in to the back of the ambulance which then drove off. Top man, Caranowski thought as he watched it drive off, sirens blaring and he went back to co-ordinating things, only to see a rather bemused paramedic standing there. "You ok, son?"

"I'm not sure," the man said, looking very concerned. "I could have sworn I left my vehicle here…"

"Hey babe," said Wisdom as he sat down next to Lydia, seeing how pale she was. Lydia said nothing. "You and I need to talk, and if I'm the only one of who's going to say anything that's fine." She turned her head away. "I don't know what I did that upset you so much, I really don't, but I can hazard a guess. It was Kitty that made you leave, or rather how close we were. Am I right?" There was still no answer. "I admit there's a part of me that's always going to lover her, a part of me that's going to want her. The darker side of me would do you, would do her, would do Terry, hell I'd cut a swathe through you all if I thought I could get away with it. Before her, I'd have done it, but I realised what love is, what you can lose, what you really want." He leant over to her, his voice almost a whisper. "Of everyone on the team, the one person who knew me best was you. Not her."

"And I know you didn't love me," Lydia said, still not looking at him. "You have no idea how hard it was, how difficult it was for me to watch you with her, watch how bad she felt when you were injured and know that she was always going to be a spectre over us, over you and anyone else you want to get involved with. Leave me alone, Pete. I left for a reason."

"Fine," said Pete. "After one thing though. Fury believes the Byron Agnecy had GW Bridge killed, and me and Sarah have found that the French Government is covering up the truth. We're breaking in to the Ministry of the Interior and I need backup. I need you and Maverick."

"Pete, we're in no fit state to do this," said North, who had been listening uncomfortably at the other side of the ambulance. "What you're talking about…"

"Is risking my neck for a dead ally," said Wisdom. "Banshee works for the Byron Agency, the Byron Agency use the same MO for operations as Black Air. If Black Air and the Byron Agency are one and the same, we all have a common foe. I don't have the resources of SHIELD, I just have you."

"And me," called Sarah.

"And her," added Pete. "We can wait a few days, I can pump you up with steroids and stuff or something and we can do this."

"I don't know," Maverick said. "Can we think about it?" Pete nodded.

"We're heading for a small village on the outskirts of Lyon," he said. "We'll rest there and see what to do next." His eyes turned to Lydia, who wasn't looking at him, but he could see she was crying. "Damn it," he whispered and pulled out his cell phone and dialled a number. "Brian, it's me. I need a favour…"

The Heirarchy would be most displeased with Sean Cassidy's performance. First he'd let the X-Men best him and then Wisdom had outsmarted him. He wasn't happy, but he had his people get out and get out quickly and now he was doing damage limitation.

"Commander Caranowski," he said. "I'm Agent Cassidy, I work for the Byron Agency."

Caranowski's brow was furrowed and Sean could see he was having a rough day. "How can I help you?"

"I believe you're looking for my people," Cassidy said. "This was a Byron Agency operation and we've lost two very dangerous prisoners."

"Prisoners?" Caranowski face fell, as if things were falling in to place. "Oh God…" He pulled himself together. "Regardless of the state of the prisoners, am I to understand they're former SHIELD agents?" Cassidy smiled inwardly.

"You saw them?"

"Their commander said they were SHIELD, then they stole an ambulance." Cassidy felt sorry for the man, knowing he was going to seriously chastised by his superiors. His superiors were on the telephone to them now, so he knew what was going to happen. "They showed me badges, I should have…" He trailed off, seeing his career evaporating before his eyes.

"Nae, lad," said Sean, comforting him. "You had no idea that they were fakes. They were dangerous and we know it was them that set off the explosion and caused this chaos."

"I'll put out a bulletin, have our people scouring for them," Caranowski started but Sean shook his head.

"We have delegated authority on this case," he said, "however we're handing it over to SHIELD. These rouges are their former agents, it seems fitting they should be the ones to handle it." Cassidy would love to see the look on Fury's face when that came through to him, that he had to designate his former people as terrorists and hunt them down. The real question would be how much force he put in to it. "Come on, let's go have a coffee and see what we can sort out. We may be able to salvage this yet."

Fury shook his head as he read the reports of what had happened in France in the last day or so. Wisdom and his accomplice had gone a bit too far in what they did, but they had rescued North and del Ruiz and that was good to know. Of course, now he needed to send someone after them, but Wisdom had already been thinking ahead and had contacted Brian Braddock, who'd contacted Forge, who'd contacted Fury with a simple message: 'There'd been five Beatles before Martin brought in Ringo." It seemed fairly innocuous, but Fury thought about it, and pulled up the original file on X-Force. Wisdom, del Ruiz, North, Rourke, Raven. The original five members of the team. If Fury was reading it right, Wisdom was telling him not to send Pryde, or any of the others, but he could feel it was directed at Katherine Pryde, the replacement member when they though Wisdom had died.

Fury knew he had to send someone after Wisdom, to make it look like they were taking the problem seriously. He'd never formally accepted Wisdom's resignation, and he was supposedly on a leave of absence. Procedure said the ranking officer of the team, or next senior officer in the chain of command, would put a squad together and take the rogue agent down. Technically, Fury was the next ranking agent, and since the review panel were concerned with things being done by the book…

"Get me Agents Rourke and Raven," he said. "Get them to finish their current ops and then reassign them to me, and alert the HERMES team that we're going to France as soon as they return…"

That would give the Byron Agency something to think about.

It had been three days since they'd rescued Lydia and David from the Byron Agency. In that time they had arrived at a small village and boarded the Midnight Runner, the formerly the hypersonic jet of the original Excalibur team, which was also a prototype of state of the art medical transports used at Muir Isle. They'd be designed by Brian Braddock and this was his own personal aircraft that he'd lent Wisdom for this. It hid them from prying eye with a cloaking field and allowed the injured agents to regain their strength faster than any hospital would have, but Wisdom and Lydia still weren't talking. He'd tried, but there was nothing and he didn't understand it. He'd heard how concerned she'd been when he'd been in the medlab at SHIELD, but after he'd recovered, she'd just left. She hadn't even said goodbye and he knew he didn't get it, and she seemed to think he didn't love her. Sarah had been no help on the matter, saying he should just get drunk and get over it and David hadn't provided any insights either.

He'd caught them up to speed on almost everything that had happened, from the happenings with Abyss to the death of Bridge and what they'd found out about the Byron Agency and both Lydia and David agreed the only option was to break in to the Ministry of the Interior. However they all knew that the Byron Agency knew they were coming and Wisdom had also figured they'd bring in SHIELD, just to make it official and avoid any problems like they'd already had, but Pete had a plan. He always had a plan and if the message had gotten through okay, he'd be able to put in action soon enough. There had been a note on the controls of the auto-pilot - 'Not a scratch' and Wisdom knew he was putting Brian's neck on the line as well here.

The Midnight Runner was cloaked and the autopilot could hover over the Ministry of the Interior and then the team could scale down to the offices, get in, get what they needed and get out. It would be made easier by the image inducers they had from the Runner, holdovers from the days when the craft was part of the family of X-Jets.

Sarah was the master thief and she would be able to get in to the offices with ease, with Wisdom, Maverick and Lydia running interference and making sure that the Byron Agency and whatever SHIELD brought with them were kept busy, busy enough for Sarah to get the info and expose the Byron Agency as being complicit in the murder of GW Bridge. He looked at his friends as the jet arrived in position.

"For GW," he said, knowing that was why they were doing this. It wasn't for Pete that they were doing this, it was for their departed friend. He opened the hatch and Maverick jumped first, landing in a crouch as his mutant abilities to absorb impacts protected him from being hurt. Wisdom wasn't far behind using his hot knives to slow his descent.

"Show offs," Sarah muttered and released the cables to allow the two girls to drop.

"Welcome to X-Force," Lydia said, softly and they dropped, a smile crossing Sarah's face, as she wondered at what point she became part of Wisdom's little mutant team. The four of them said nothing as they went to work, getting in to the building through a roof access point. Somewhere an alarm would be sounding and people would be coming and Sarah hurried. She wasn't sure where she was going, but she was going to trust her instincts and allow her higher sense to guide her. It had rarely failed her in the past.

"We need a distraction from us as well," Maverick said. "Technically none of us are SHIELD." Wisdom nodded and took out a cigarette, lit it and put it as close as he could to a smoke detector and after a moment the fire alarm went. "I was thinking more of one that drew them away from us," said North and Wisdom smiled.

"Trust me," he said as they ducked in to a room. "Lyd, keep that door closed when they come through. You're strong enough to fool them in to thinking it's locked." She nodded and in a moment the door was tried but it didn't move as she pushed on it. Then, when they stopped trying it, Wisdom looked through the keyhole and could see one of the secret service agents out there. He used the image inducer to replicate the uniform and change his facial appearance, the others followed suit, and he watched as the agents started to move off. When they had gone, they slipped out and tagged along, catching up as if they were parts of the team hunting for things. Down the corridor, they could see the agents trying the doors and they joined in.

"What the hell would they be doing here?" a familiar voice asked, coming up the stairs behind them and Wisdom turned. Raven and Teresa were with Fury, in SHIELD uniform and looking ready for a fight and Pete smiled inwardly. The band was almost back together.

"Not sure," Fury said. "We think it's them, but we can't be sure. Security alarm, then fire alarm - certainly drawing attention, but why?"

"Wait," said Raven. "I think…" He looked down the corridor. "It's them!" he said looking at the disguised agents.

"MAV!" Wisdom called and Maverick unleashed a bio-kinetic blast, taking out the French secret service agents and they cancelled the image inducers and the former members of X-Force stood opposite each other, not only on the physical plane but the astral plane as well. "Very nice," Wisdom said.

"Interesting," Wisdom said. "So what do we do now?" "Stand down," Fury said, his weapon pointed at Wisdom. "I don't know what you're doing, but you've crossed the line.""Can't do that, Nick," Wisdom said. "The French are covering up Bridge's death and I want to know why.""It was an accident, plain and simple," said Fury."If you think that you're deluded," said Wisdom. "Don't make us fight you.""You can't think you'll win," said Fury said. "We can take you down telepathically.""Shall we find out who's faster," said Pete. "Marcus' psionics or my hot knives?""We know how you think, we know how you fight," said Lydia. "We don't have to do this." "Very nice," Wisdom said, as each of them gained the plan in their minds."We won't have long to pull this rouse off," Raven said."What have you found out?" Fury asked."Bridge was murdered and the French Interior Minister ordered a cover up," Wisdom replied. "And the Byron Agency and Black Air are one and the same.""My da?" asked Terry, almost in disbelief."Working with them," said Maverick. "I don't know how they got to him, but they have. I'm sorry, Terry." Theresa didn't answer, but they could sense the sorrow coming off of her."Problem is Byron have SHIELD by the short and curlies," Fury said. "I need hard proof, that they're Black Air, and they were behind it GW's death.""Working on it," Wisdom said. "We all know the plan?."

"Yes we do," Fury said and he nodded to the other two.

Sarah found the Interior Minister's office with relative ease, letting her senses guide her and she stood in the office, wondering where the clues were, the evidence she needed to bring the corruption of the Byron Agency down. As she scoured the room she felt she saw something and looked amongst some papers and there it was - a memo that ordered the case closed, as a personal favour to the Minister. Below that was another memo from the Byron Agency, saying how much they would appreciate the matter being closed, citing several political favours done to put the French government where it was. Then she felt it, the sense that something was lying to her, that something was wrong. It was too easy, these things were in plain sight, ready for her to find. Then there was a high pitched noise, inaudible to anyone but her and the papers disintegrated and there was a flashing light.

"Oh shit," she said and ran for the door, getting there just as an explosion rocked through the offices.

"Yes we do," Fury said and he nodded to the other two.

"Sorry, Nick," said Terry and hit him with a sonic burst, slamming him in to the wall. "Did you really think they were alone? We're X-Force."

"I knew you'd bring them," said Wisdom. "Very predictable, and now we're all together again, and we're going to do what you can't - take down the people you can't touch. It's why I quit, and the proof of the Agency's motives will be here any minute." Then the explosion occurred and the plan was going south, but this was why they had a contingency. "Or not." The team started to run, trying to find Sarah, knowing they only had one chance at getting out of here and they caught each other up about halfway. "Everyone, Sarah, Sarah, everyone. Let's go…"

Terry nodded and pressed a few buttons on a keypad, over-riding the HERMES controls. It was good for one jaunt and not very far otherwise the SHIELD techs could stop them, but the Midnight Runner wasn't far away and they were quickly aboard the plane and they destroyed the SHIELD gear.

The orders Fury had given them on the astral plane were simple. If they couldn't get the proof, then X-Force were to go deep undercover and do whatever it took to take down the Byron Agency. Theresa and Raven were in on it because of what had happened between Banshee and Fury and she wanted to free her father from whatever hold they had on him, and Raven was part of the team. They'd be outlaws until everything was sorted, hunted by the Byron Agency, by SHIELD, by many others, but their job was simple - stop the Byron Agency from completing their agenda. SHIELD couldn't touch them, but X-Force could.

"I don't understand," said Maverick as the Midnight Runner headed for England and a safe rendezvous point with Brian. "Where was Shadowcat?"

"Told Fury I didn't want her here," said Wisdom, looking at Lydia. "I want the X-Force I chose, not the X-Force we became. Right now, we just became pretty big terrorists. We set off an explosion at an archaeological monument and attacked a government installation. We're on the run."

"Thanks for letting us in on that bit of the plan," Maverick said. "Lydia and I aren't… It's not what we wanted."

"I know," Wisdom said, still not taking his eyes off his ex-girlfriend, "but I can't do this without you. All of you, but whoever wants out, it's been arranged. Make your choices when we get to the UK, but first I need to tell you about what happened with Abyss."

Raven linked their minds, to let them see the truth, and then it would be decision time. The team were back together; it was getting them to stay together that would be the real test.

Next issue: Can Wisdom convince the team to stay together and go on the run in order to stop the Byron Agency, and how will Fury be able to explain the defection of two more agents? The all new X-Force continues