"Well, well, well," said a voice and Fugue and Wisdom looked up from their lovemaking.

"Damn it," growled the naked Red and White Queen. She'd been so close to getting what she wanted

"Oh, thank Christ," said Wisdom, who couldn't free himself from what was happening to him. Then he realised he knew the voice. "Oh, hell..."

"Between a rock and... a hard place?" chuckled the Black Air agent named Darcy, who stood there, his gun pointed at them. "Do your trousers up, Petey." Pete made as if to do as Darcy told him, but he fired a hot knife instead and Darcy simply waved and it dissipated. "Not quick enough, Pete." He looked at Fugue who looked decidedly dissatisfied. "Which is unusual for you."

"Get stuffed, Darce," said Pete. "It always a toss up between you and Scratch as to who I hated most. Still you always were second best."

"So what happens now?" said Lady Fugue as she grabbed her dress from the floor. "I take it you are Black Air."

"Yeah, he is," said Pete. "And this happens now." A hot knife manifested itself and plunged through her head and out the other side. Lady Fugue didn't have time to make a sound before she hit the floor dead.

"Now that was stupid," said Darcy, amazed at what he'd just seen. "You'll pay for that."

"I always do," muttered Pete. "Lead the way."

"Anything else?" said Darcy, his tone dripping sarcasm.

"Yeah," said Pete looking at his crotch and a shiver went up his spine at how he'd been used. "Can you get me some bleach? I have the need to disinfect something..."

Shadowcat was on her own in the UK. It had been a very long time since she'd been here and so much had changed.

She, Kurt and Peter had left Excalibur after Brian and Meggan's wedding to rejoin the X-Men and soon after that it had all gone so wrong. Kurt now worked for the Vatican, Colossus had died in battle as part of Exodus' team of Exiles and she had joined SHIELD. Xavier was gone, the X-Men were a shade of their former selves and it all seemed so wrong. London had once had a homely feel to it and now there was nowhere that truly felt like home to her.

X-Force and the Hellfire Club had been taken by Black Air, and she was the only one of them to escape. Now she needed help and there was nowhere to go. She had seen the reports of the battle in Brussels and she knew Brian and Meggan were in no shape to help her. She had no means of contacting either SHIELD or the Weird Happenings Organisation and without them she couldn't get help from Muir. Any lesser agent would balk under this kind of pressure, but Kate Pryde was different.

She had done and seen things that most SHIELD agents never would. She'd been trained to survive by the best there was and she had used those skills time and again and she would do so again. The trouble was where to go. She knew where was being watched and she also knew that Black Air had a long reach. Who could she turn to, what one person was there in London that Black Air would never think of her to contact. She smiled as the answer came to her and she hoped he hadn't changed his number...

David North struggled against the chains that held him suspended in the air. His clothing had been removed, his technology stripped and he only had one good eye for the moment which irritated him because he had forgotten how much of a bind it was. He also knew his powers had been inhibited because otherwise he would have been out of here. His arms ached as well, as he'd been hanging here a while and he knew it was all part of the system.

He had been captured before and he'd been in similar situations to this but each time he'd known what he'd been taken for. This time he wasn't so sure. It seemed Black Air had a grudge against X-Force for a reason of some sort and they'd just happened to be in the wrong place at the right time, and then a door opened.

"Ah, Mr North. Or do you prefer Mr Nord?" Maverick didn't answer, thinking he was giving this person nothing. "Yes, we rather thought that this might be your answer." Maverick couldn't see the person talking to him in the gloom but he could tell it was a man and he was now sitting down. "No matter, I'm not really here for the conversational aspect of your company."

Maverick shook his head, thinking this was what he had expected. Torture him for information.

"Despite what you may think, Mr North, we have no desire to learn the secret of SHIELD, Weapon X or any other organisation you might have an association with. Rest assured we have agents all over the globe, agents who provide us with details as to all sorts of events. For example, we have this."

Maverick heard a click and a thin beam of light came from behind him, projecting an image. Isabel Ferguson, his friend and supplier of his armour, weapons and information before he joined SHIELD was being held with a gun to her head.

"God, no," Maverick whispered, knowing what this was.

"Yes, a very unfortunate incident," the man said. "We were lucky to get this footage from the Illuminati after Wolverine had finished with the agents on site."

"Please don't hurt her," she was saying, and Maverick knew it was in reference to Maddie, her little girl. He knew what was coming as he and Elena had spoken before he'd come to the UK, after the mission for the CSA. He steeled himself.

"You'll never know," said the gunman and shot her in the head.

Maverick flinched as he watched her head simply explode. Seeing was not the same as knowing.

"There it is," the man said and Maverick felt pain.

"This is an interesting thing," said the voice. "A alien virus that reacts to stress by destroying flesh. It's called the Blood Eagle. We used it some time ago on your colleagues Mr Wisdom, and he showed us what it could do. Not quite what we expected however we have refined it since, and now we have an opening."

"So you are here to kill me," Maverick muttered.

"Yes, and I'm guessing you really want to know why but telling you would be no fun... Now, what else do we have? The break up of you and Elena..."

Lydia Del Ruiz opened her eyes. She barely remembered what had happened to her, but she knew the rest of X-Force should be about somewhere and then it came back to her. They had been captured by Black Air and she looked about. She had been taken out of her SHIELD uniform and she was in an orange jumpsuit and she was shackled to a bench. The hum of engine motors told her she was flying, but where was she headed.

"At last," said a woman's voice and Lydia looked up. "You're awake. Didn't think the jab would keep you out this long."

"Do I know you?" Lydia asked, trying to break free.

"No," she replied, "and that'll do you no good. Inhibitor jab at the same time we tranqued you. Your powers are gone, so straining at the shackles will just break your wrists. I'm Sari St Hubbins, I work for Black Air, which has an irony to it, but I failed 'em, now I'm stuck here."

"What do you want with me?"

"Me? Nothing, luv," she said and Lydia could tell she was one of the more degenerate members of Black Air. "We're taking you home."

"Home," said Lydia and she felt her blood run cold. "You mean..."

"Genosha, yeah. Seems there's one or two people who'd like to speak to you about your dad." Lydia could still remember the images in her head when the Dragon Lord had tried to break them, the things they had done to her in Genosha while she had been on trial for crimes against mutancy. It still had an effect even after all this time. "Guess you're remembering Diego Casseas. Yeah, we know all about Madripoor."

"How?"

"There's precious little they don't know," St Hubbins said. "That's why they sent me with you. Your Pete's current tart. I'm his ex." Lydia shook her head.

"How many's he been with?"

"Oh, he puts himself about a bit," said St Hubbins. "Always has. No loyalty, none at all... oh, look this should be interesting." She turned the television up

"Jose Del Ruiz," the announcer said, "styled the spiritual soul of Genosha has been arrested by mutants loyal to Magneto. Del Ruiz has for some time been opposed to the actions of Magneto, and is seen by many observers as the best and only alternative to Magneto's reign of the island. However his actions and words have been viewed as treasonous and warrants were placed for his arrest after the Magistrate Riots..."

"Guess they won't be needing you to help find him after all," said St Hubbins with a smile. "But you'll be able to keep him company in his prison cell. Assuming he lives that long..."

Lydia glared at the woman, but her thoughts were on her father. She had wanted to hear about him for so long and with so little information from Genosha it had been hard to find out. This was not what she wanted to hear, but she would not show tears, not in front of this bitch.

Marcus Raven's head rolled with the punch, but that was more through luck than judgement.

For the last few hours they had simply come in and started striking him with fists, beating him with sticks, sending electricity through his body and then leaving him to recover for a few moments before it began again. They said nothing, asking no questions, and without his powers he couldn't tell why they were doing it other than to cause him pain and distress.

They were masters of inflicting pain and his body was wracked from the latest assault and he knew if was almost over and that eventually he would have a chance to rest. It was the not knowing that got to him. For years he had always had a sense of what people wanted, what was being said behind his back, the lies that were being told to him.

It had made him good at his job at the FBI, and he had one of the best records on the force, until the bastards had got rid of him. He had always kept his gifts a secret, but he had known, his boss had known. Marcus shook his head.

Why was he thinking of his days at the FBI now? After all this time, why was the image of Michael Gow, former Deputy Director entering his head. It had to be something Black Air were doing, something they could do without his powers to protect him against any mental assaults and the beatings were keeping him disorientated enough to not focus on the things being put in his head.

That made sense, and so did the idea they had underestimated his natural mental strength. He'd lived a lot longer than most other people, seen things and lived through wars. He had stared down Charles Xavier and turned him down. He maybe a novice in the use of his powers but he was not a novice in life and they would not break him. He was aware of what they were doing, he was just unsure of why they were doing it. What were they trying to do? Had Black Air been responsible for his outing as a mutant, for putting him in a situation where he had been forced to quit his job?

Did Gow have a connection to Black Air. Was Gow behind all this? What was the motivation? He would find out and stop whatever Black Air meant to do. He would figure it out.

Teresa Cassidy screamed in pain as the lasers sliced in to her. There was no use in being brave about this, there were thin beams of light burning in to her skin, dissecting pieces of her body and all the while she could hear the doctors talking about how marvellous these nanites in her body were, and they had damaged her to see what the limits of Sinister's experiments were.

She remembered being brought in, gagged, bound and her powers shut down so there was nothing she could do to escape from her bonds. They had stripped her of her clothing and fastened her to the table with cords so tight they almost cut off her circulation. Then they had shaved her head, and drawn diagrams over her body to prepare for the procedures they were going to do. She could hear them talking about as if they were choosing which type of syrup to have in their latte and it terrified her all the more because she was nothing more a lab experiment.

No, she was less than that, having no more value outside of what her body could tell them than a piece of meat and once they had learnt all they could they would dispose of her like any other piece of biological waste. In between experiments she could hear them discussing whether or not the nanites would prolong her death in the furnace, at what speed could they regenerate tissues that were being turned to ash. The sound dampening field around her muted her screams so that they could not hear her cries, but she could hear every word they were saying and she knew there was no rescue for her, because they spoke of the other members of X-Force and what had happened to them.

They had bored holes in her teeth with the lasers, intensified the light so she had been blinded, extracted tissues from her ovaries and other painful and intense operations. Now they were giving her a mastectomy to see how long it would take her to regrow her right breast. She could feel the hands touching her removing the now defunct tissues and but no tears came from her eyes.

They were waiting to see if her tear ducts would regrow before her breast did.

"LEAVE THEM ALONE!" Pete shouted as he watched his friends being tortured, abused and experimented on. "THIS IS NOTHING TO DO WITH THEM!"

"On the contrary," said Sir James Jaspers as he looked at Wisdom. "It has everything to do with them. They're your family, your friends. After your betrayal of Black Air, again and again, we put out a contract on you and Excalibur, or as they were at the time. However the assassins were thwarted and by the time we were ready to strike again, you had left the group and then Excalibur disbanded shortly afterwards. It seemed a much better idea to let you simply fade away, another old super hero who'd had his day and his time was over."

"I warned you then that if you came after my mates, I'd take you down," said Wisdom.

"An idle threat, and we both know it," Jaspers said. "We've been developing ways and methods to contain you sand your kind for years. Dream Nails was only the start, as well you know."

"This from Mad Jim?" sneered Pete. "Mad Jim Jaspers, reality warping freak of nature who was killed by the Fury and resurrected by the idiots of Black Air?"

"Mad Jim is gone," Jaspers said, fury in his eyes. "While I may not be the original Jaspers, everything he was is abhorrent to me. His methods were crude and pathetic and he allowed himself to be defeated. I may not have his powers, but rest assured, I do have power enough..." Pete could see the sparkle in his eyes and he knew that in there somewhere, Mad Jim Jaspers was trying to get out again.

"Gone, yeah, right."

"You try and goad me, Wisdom, and this will not do," Jaspers said, pressing a button on his hand held device. "I had thought that your viewing of what will be the slow and painful deaths of X-Force would break you, but I see we'll have to try something else."

"The Hellfire Tossers? I've no love for them."

"Oh, they were a loose end, and you know how I hate loose ends," Jaspers said and Romany was brought in to the room.

"RO!" said Pete

"Pete!" she said, but the two of them were separated from each other.

"Touch my sister, I will FUCKING have you!" Pete shouted at Jaspers

"How touching," Jaspers said and looked to one of his men. "Turn up the heat in here. Make it about 40 Celsius. That should be enough."

"What are you doing, you twisted freak?" said Wisdom, as Jaspers walked over to Romany. "I told you what I'd do if you touched her..."

"And I believe you," said Jaspers. "Without powers, I truly believe you would escape your handcuffs, come over here and strangle me if I so much as laid a hand on her. However, I don't have to touch her..." His eyes crackled with energy as he looked at Pete and Romany cried out as if in pain.

"LEAVE HER ALONE!" Pete shouted but his words fell on deaf ears.

"Pete?" he heard her say, her voice sounding wrong, all tinny and distorted and Jaspers stepped aside back. "It hurts, Pete."

"I may not have my originals powers, but I do have power enough," he said and he revealed that Romany Wisdom was now a living statue of ice.

"No," said Pete.

"I will break your spirit, Wisdom," Jaspers said as he walked towards the door. "She'll melt away to nothing before your eyes, she'll die screaming your name and you'll do nothing but watch her become a pool of water and eventually evaporate to nothing."

"This is nothing to do with them," Pete said, imploring Jaspers to stop this.

"They're involved with you in this, now they pay the price." Then Jaspers was gone and all Pete could hear was his sister.

"Peter? I can't see you? Are you still there? Peter? Pete? Please, Peter?"