The Helicarrier moved across the skies, coming over the harbour area of Madripoor's Lowtown and came to a full stop hovering majestically over the city, higher in the air than the tower blocks of Hightown, and Nick Fury looked out and down from the bridge.

"The transport is on its way down now, sir," said one of his agents and Fury nodded.

"When North arrives, send him up. Our ground agents can do the mopping up and I want to know how this mission turned in to such a goddamn mess." The agent nodded and sent the signal down to the transport carrier. X-Force had stopped the Dragon Lord and now the criminal element of the country was concerned with SHIELD. They had taken out the last two crime bosses of the island and now they were here proper. To ensure they wasn't a problem in the future, the team had been given medical attention while SHIELD arrived and now they were ready to given a debriefing.

"God, I hate this place," Fury murmured, speaking through his teeth which were clamped down on the cigar he had in his mouth. What Logan saw in the place he would never understand and that was that, but SHIELD were here now and the lawlessness of the country would come to an end and maybe, just maybe, this place could become somewhere likeable.

"Colonel?" came a voice. "We're getting a report from one of our agents in Middle East. It's a Priority One Alpha transmission, sir."

"I'll take it in my office," said Fury and went to take the report. Priority One Alpha meant it was for the senior officer on duty as it was of the utmost importance and he was only away for a moment when the bridge access doors opened at Maverick stepped on the command centre of SHIELD.

"Colonel Fury about?" he asked. "I was told he was up here and wanted to see me as soon as I arrived.

"He's in his office. There's a Priority call from the Middle East, so you might want to wait," said the agent and Maverick nodded. He turned and walked toward the door and knocked. That would let Fury know he was here and after a few moments the door opened.

"North! Get in here!" barked Fury and Maverick shook his head and went in.

"Take the call from the Middle East wasn't good?"

"What?" asked Fury, wanting to know how he knew.

"Agent Fargo told me," said North. "Stopped me from barging in."

"Oh," said Fury. "Just something going down about a mutant killing. Nothing that important. Someone gettin' overexcited."

"Fair enough, sir," said North. "You wanted to see me?"

"Yup," said Fury, stubbing the remains of the cigar out on the metal block on his desk. "The others are gettin' checked out, specially Agent Del Ruiz. Seein' as you're the only one fully with it, you get the job of explainin' what the Sam Hill happened down there?"

North sighed. Pete Wisdom would owe him for this and he began to tell Fury what had happened, taking care to leave out the information about the traitor. Wisdom had told him not to, because Pete was adamant they couldn't trust anyone.

"I'm fine?" said Pete as the medic signed his sheet. He'd been checked out thoroughly since his return to the mobile headquarters, but it was for a very good reason. If he failed the medical, he was off the active duty list and that meant he'd have restricted access to things until he passed.

"A matter of opinion, Commander Wisdom," said the doctor with good humour, "but physically you're okay. The bruises will fade, though the scar from the iron rod that pierced your side probably won't. You were fortunate it didn't go too far in, Commander. The collapse of the building will go down as one of the luckiest escapes in SHIELD history and your powers also seem to be recharging fine. I'll submit my report to the Colonel and you'll be back on the active duty roster soon enough."

"What of the rest of the team?" asked Wisdom as he got off the bed and walked with the doctor to the corridor.

"Agent Raven is seriously exhausted. He strained his powers in his telepathic work and his telekinetics saved him from serious hurt when the palace collapsed. He's been resting for a few days, but it will be a few days more before he's fully fit again. I can sign him off on active duty, but he's not to overdo it. Commander." Pete got the message from the doctor's tone.

"Fair enough. North, I know about. What about Terry?"

"Miss Rourke is fine," said the doctor. "She seems to have a very capable healing capacity. The on site medical team said her ribs were broken and that her one of her lungs had been punctured, however there seems to be now only mild bruising, and there's only a vague indication of scar tissue on her lung. Perhaps it was a misdiagnosis, or perhaps she has some special healing ability."

"Not that I know of," said Pete, thoughtfully. Siryn had been hurt quite badly when the palace fell down, a pillar falling across her chest. He knew that from Maverick's field report to him when he was in the hospital after they'd stitched him up. It was there that he'd told North to keep quiet about the traitor when he made his report to Fury. Theresa Rourke's rapid recovery, as well as her extended use of her powers during the battle, was a mystery that Wisdom wanted to check out. Something was going on with her and he needed to know what, so they avoided any surprises in the future. But first there was something else. "And Lydia?"

"Is still in intensive care, sir," said the doctor. "The broken bones have been cast, her wounds treated and the internal bleeding was stopped, but she's still in a great deal of pain." The doctor was still concerned though, Pete could read it in his voice.

"What else?" he said, daring himself to get the answer.

"She still hasn't woken up. We're not sure why."

"Damn," said Pete, closing his eyes. He could feel her slipping away and it hurt. Losing someone was painful enough, but at the end of the day it had been his call to send her up against Casseas. The blame for this was on him. "Doc?"

"Yes?"

"Let me know if there's any change."

"I will, Commander. You brought back four out of five in good health. It could have been worse." Wisdom nodded and the doctor went to see his other patients.

Four out of five, mused Pete as he wandered off to find Teresa. So why did it feel as if they'd scored much, much lower?

"So there you have it, Colonel," said Maverick, finishing off his briefing. Fury had made him go over every part of it twice, just to make sure he had the full picture, or as much of it as Wisdom wanted him to see.

"Right," said Fury, knowing that there was something missing but also sure he'd not be able to get any more information from him. It was as good a cover story as he'd heard in a while, and North was good at keeping secrets and mixing the truth with lies, but it wasn't ringing totally true in Fury's ears. "Fair enough," he said, deciding he'd deal with Wisdom later. "You and your team risked your lives down there, and despite the mess you've created, you got the job done. We've almost all the Folding Circle in custody."

"Still no sign of Silk Fever?" said Maverick.

"Nope. We're assuming she fell in the pit, which has now closed and moved somewhere else. Who knows if it, or she, 'll ever turn up again?"

"Colonel, may I ask what's going to happen down there now?"

"Madripoor? Well, this could have waited until a proper debrief with the rest of X-Force, but until I get the go ahead from the docs, you're the only one on active duty. We'll install a peace-keeping force down there. An actual SHIELD presence to maintain the place. They've no ruler, no government and I'm invoking the UN sanctions that we can keep law and order in there."

"So, we basically just went out on a military coup?" asked Maverick, not liking the way this was starting to sound.

"Nope," said Fury. "We went in and arrested several terrorists. That's what we do. We stop terrorists, and these days we're nippin' them in the bud early."

"How many agents will be down there?" asked Maverick.

"25 in total," said Fury. "It's going to be a lot quieter than it used to be down there."

"Thanks, Colonel." Maverick stood.

"North," said Fury as he was about to leave. "X-Force did okay down there. Aside from the mass destruction and total chaos you left down there, you did the job. You stuck in there and didn't give up. Far as I'm concerned yer all everythin' we want in SHIELD agents. Let yer team know and send up Wisdom when he's done."

"Yes sir, thank you, sir," said North and went to see how his friends were doing. Then he realised that was how he thought of them and he smiled. Perhaps X-Force would be a better team than he'd originally thought. However what they'd done bothered him. They needed a team conference, to figure out just what was going on.

Marcus stood outside the small medical chamber, looking through the window at Lydia. Monitors bleeped, liquids flowed through tubes, giving her what she needed to live as well as morphine to keep her calm. She was healing in a physical state but there was something wrong in her mind, something that kept her for cognisant thought. As if her mind didn't want her to wake up.

"What do you think?" asked Maverick as he came across Raven watching her.

"Ah don't know," said Marcus, with a heavy sigh. "It could be that she withdrew in to herself to block out the pain from her attack, but with the morphine she should come back out of it."

"Unless it's blocking her thought process," said David.

"Who knows?" said Marcus. "I wish I could go in and help her, but Ah don't have the strength t'do it. Ah ain't exactly proficient in using my powers as an offensive weapon."

"Believe me," said North, "I know that. My powers didn't used to be like this. They absorbed impacts and that was it. Channelling that power as an energy blast only came on with the Legacy Virus somehow unleashing a hidden aspect of it, and even then I didn't use it much because it drained the hell out of me."

"How did you do it then?" asked Raven.

"I practised with my powers, target practice, more complicated stuff, controlling the beams and things. Making the energy tighter, more compact in it's blast. Things like that."

"So how do you train someone in the mental usage of powers like that? I can't use target practice with mind blasts. Targets don't have mind's to hit."

"Good point," said David. "To be honest I don't know. Except we know a girl who knows people."

"Terry," said Raven. "I know, it's just that if I ask the X-Men for help in training my powers, honing them, then the reasons I said no to them the first time have been wiped away. I could have helped them long ago."

"We do what's right at the time," said David, placing his hand on the man's shoulder, his gaze going towards Lydia. "No matter what the consequences are."

"Heard from Chris?"

"Nope, I checked my email but nothing. Still, the New Warriors should be an interesting influence on him.* Strange coincidence that the person I wanted to find joins the first real enemies of the team I end up fighting on my new team. He needs my help I'm here."

* (Chris is Bolt in the New Warriors series by Russ Anderson and Mike Exner III! - David)

"It's interesting you found him so quickly," said Marcus.

"I've thought that as well. Seems to me the right cards were played at the right time."

"Yeah," said Raven. "Must be my detective nature. Looking at all the possibilities."

"Oh come on, how low would they have gone to get us on the team?" asked Maverick. "Some things just fall in to place. We call it luck."

"I know," said Marcus. "Guess I'm just tired. Let's go find Terry, see if she can get me some help on my powers. Xavier must have left some kind of lesson plans somewhere."

"So you want to tell me what's going on?" asked Pete, standing in Terry's doorway.

"I dinnae know what ye mean," she said, without looking up from her computer console. "I'm kind o' busy now, Wisdom." Pete took another step in to the room and the door closed behind him, ensuring their privacy. "That was a hint t'leave."

"Love, I'm not going anywhere, and I certainly don't buy that you don't know. Healing factor been with you long has it?"

"What d'ye mean?" she asked, looking up now.

"I mean, you were hurt. A big stone column fell down on you, slamming in to your chest and knocking the air from your lungs, leaving you unable to call for help. At the same time, the impact also smashed your rib cage, breaking six of your ribs, one of which pierced your left lung and would have caused some rather nasty damage. Torn muscle, shattered bone, blood entering your body without a release. I read the medical reports, Terry."

"Ye aren't supposed to do that," she snapped, leaping up from her chair and walking over to him, her finger waving in accusation. "Ye've no right..." Pete slapped her.

"I have every right when I'm looking for a traitor in my team. I know you girl, from way back when. You've not always been the child of sweetness and light, one of Xavier's role models for humanity. I remember a rainy night in Paris when you broke in to a Black Air facility for your Uncle Tom, looking for something valuable for his new employer Eric the Red..."

"Don't go there," she warned. "It was a lifetime ago, I wasn't the same person."

"A drunken, thieving wildcat with loyalty to only her Uncle, as I remember. Who says you've changed?"

"I have!"

"Your loyalties, perhaps?" he scoffed.

"No, the person I was is dead," she shouted back at him.

"Then stop bloody well lying to me, love. I'm not stupid. I've been around secrets and lies for a lot longer than you have and I know when people are keeping things from me. Lydia is lying in a coma because of what I decided and if I was set up, then I want to know why, and right now you're my prime suspect."

"Ye... ye..." the anger started to drain from her voice, as she heard what he was saying. "Ye dinnae understand..." Her voice was small, almost a whisper.

"Then tell me," said Pete, grabbing her by the shoulders. "So we're not friends, I can live with that, but if we're going to work together, I need to know I can trust you with my life and more than that, the lives of others. For God's sake, Terry..." He looked in her to her eyes, and she looked in to his. He could see the fear in her eyes, and she was trembling. It reminded him of the first time they met and he let go of her. He could feel her warm breath on his cheek and he couldn't deny there was a spark between them, and neither could she.

"Ye..." she started to say.

"No," he said, quietly yet firmly. "It was over a long time ago between us. Just tell me what's going on with you. Despite everything, you can trust me."

"It's something terrible," she whispered. "I'm not yuir traitor, but I've betrayed everyone all the same."

"Oh," said Pete. He'd been using the traitor thing to get her to talk to him, never expecting anything like this. "Go on."

"At the time Magneto was makin' his latest big comeback play, X-Force were fightin' against King Bedlam an' his New Hellions, who had unleashed a mutant codenamed the Armageddon Man."* She took a deep breath. "During the fight, Feral, one o' our former X-Force members, attacked me an'... an' she tore out my throat."

* (In X-Force #90 - David)

"I'd heard that," admitted Pete as they sat down on her bed. "But next I knew you were back on active duty with X-Force during the latest Weapon X fiasco, so I thought it wasn't that bad."

"It was. She damaged me throat irreparably by normal methods. The scar tissue meant I'd never talk again. Or fly. Or anything. I almost hit the bottle again, an' I quit the team, to find myself."

"And you were approached, or did you find someone?"

"I was approached. By Sinister."

"Bloody hell," said Pete, his hand automatically going for his cigarettes. "What happened?"

"He said he'd been watchin' the Armageddon Man for a long time, because of his potential an'..." she hesitated a moment, "and Bedlam had interfered in his plans. However as X-Force had been instrumental in stoppin' him, he felt he 'owed' us. I was trapped by him an' I had no real choice. I was either powerless or in his debt."

"I've heard the story," said Wisdom. "Kitty told me about the time she was badly injured and the only person who could save her was Victor Von Doom. The X-Men sold their souls to save her life. He hasn't claimed it yet, at least not from them. From Kitty, yes, but the X-Men no. You could have told them."

"I wanted to," she said, "but thing started to happen. Xavier was killed, we lost half of X-Force to Magneto, then came Weapon X, then Apocalypse and then the team was disbanded. There was never a right moment to say 'I got healed by Mr Sinister'. When I met him with the team at the Weapon X project, he spoke to me first. He called me by name, and I knew that he was toyin' with me. He could have told them everythin' and it was only Weapon X that stopped him."*

* (In M2K's X-Force #6 - David)

"What did he do?" asked Pete gently, stroking her arm.

"He analysed the damage done, and once he finished he injected me wi'a serum he created from me blood. I dinnae know what it did, or how or why, but it repaired the damage to me throat in days. The scars simply shrank back."

"A healing factor?"

"Nae," she said. "A trauma inhibitor. It repairs major damage t'me body, somehow cloning missing parts o' my body. I should have burnt me throat out fighting the Dragon Lord, but I could feel it rebuildin' the strained vocal chords."

"I'd noticed that," said Pete, as he inhaled the smoke from the cigarette. "That's what made me curious. So how did you explain it to the X-Men, your miraculous recovery."

"I faked it. I came back just after Xavier was killed an' said me voice was healing but spoke in low tones and did nae use me powers. Day by day I grew stronger until eventually my powers worked again. By the time they were 'back' we'd lost half the team to Magneto. I had to pull my plays when we fought them an' pretend..."*

* (In our own X-Force #2 - David)

"So you not only blame yourself for that, but for losing the others?"

"Aye," she said, in a low whisper. "If I'd been honest, I could have done something, stopped them somehow..."

"Don't be so bloody stupid," said Pete, a hint of anger in his voice. "You at full or not, with Magneto there, you were finished anyway. He's creamed the X-Men without breaking a sweat, X-Force would have been nothing to him."

"Does nae make it feel better," she said.

"It won't." Pete's answer was cold, but honest. "Now, what do we do now? Do we tell the others or..."

Before he could finish, the klaxons began to sound across the Helicarrier and red lights began to flash, with the words 'Code One' echoing from the communications points.

"Code One?" he said, knowing that was the highest state of alert they had and wondering what the hell was happening, then the place shook. "And now we're moving."

"We're heading back to the States," said Siryn as she checked the computers. "That's all I can get."

"Better get to our posts," said Wisdom, stubbing out his cigarette, and heading for the door, making sure his ID badge was properly displayed, for security was going to be tight and he had a feeling that questions wouldn't be asked before they took you out.

Something was going down, something big.