The two mestizo men standing on the sidewalk with rifles slung over their shoulders had been eyeing the stranger ever since he'd appeared at the end of the street. They'd watched him sway rather than walk, and had shared small smiles at one point when he stumbled. It was late, and most people were smart enough to be off the streets. Particularly drunk white men.

<"American, you think?"> one of the mestizos asked.

<"Of course. He probably thinks he's at Club Med.">

The men continued to watch as the white man drew closer, finally passing them with a friendly, if slightly green, nod in their direction. They let him get nearly to the opposite side of the building they were guarding before one of them spoke.

<"Excuse me.">

The white man stopped and looked back. His features were angular and sharp beneath a mop of movie star's black hair, and his eyes seemed more suited to suspicion than the relaxed curiosity that filled them now.

<"Yes?"> he answered. <"Can I help you?">

The gunmen glanced at one another. Not a completely stupid gringo then. At least he spoke the language. They'd nailed his nationality, however. That accent could only belong to an American.

<"Do you know where you are?"> one of the men asked.

The white man looked around, as if this was a damn good question and he hadn't given it much thought before now. <"The lovely city of La Libertad,"> he said finally.

<"It is late, sir,"> one of the men said. <"You should go home now.">

<"On my way,"> the white man said with a jaunty little salute.

<"Where are you coming from?"> the other one said. This man was a little less amused and a lot more suspicious. His right hand hung straight down, resting on the butt of the rifle slung over his shoulder.

The white man started to move back toward them, still swaying a little as he pointed in the direction he'd come. <"The Black Pearl. You've heard of it?">

The second gunman relaxed at that. He and his comrade shared another grin. The Black Pearl was a gentleman's club, notorious for scalping unwary white men with money to spend. Usually the club's clients didn't wander away before dawn...but maybe this one had been scalped a little too effectively.

<"Hey,"> the drunk said, reaching into his coat and pulling out a bottle, <"do you like American booze? I got some Jim Beam here...">

This got the attention of one of the mestizos. He reached for the bottle without comment, but his more serious friend put a hand on his shoulder. <"We are on duty...">

<"No, it's good. Here, look."> The white man took a swallow from the small bottle, scrunched his face up, then exhaled and wiped his mouth. He nodded and handed it to the first gunman, who accepted it despite his comrade's sour look. <" Don't ever let anybody tell you that shit Jack Daniels makes is a real American whiskey. This is the good stuff here.">

<"That's enough,"> the more serious gunman said, putting his hand back on his gun. <"Be on your way.">

His friend took a drink from the bottle, capped it, and handed it back to the American with an amiable nod. Barely half a swallow remained in the bottom of the glass. The American took it, touched it to his eyebrow in farewell--<"Good evening to you gentlemen">--then wheeled about and started moving down the street again.

Neither gunman replied, but both of them kept their eyes glued to the British man as he moved away. When he was out of sight, they looked at each other.

<"That was probably the most exciting thing that will happen tonight,"> groused the one who'd taken a drink. His partner merely grunted and resumed his post.

The American man crossed the narrow street, then turned the corner at the end of the block, and once he was out of sight of the guards, his gait changed. The sway he'd been walking with narrowed itself to a relaxed but narrow strut, his shoulders squared and his head lifted. He took the bottle of Jim Beam out of his coat, looked at it with distaste, then tossed it into a convenient pile of garbage lying against the building he was passing. He paused for a moment, lit a cigarette, then ducked into this building and began working his way up the filthy, ancient stairway to the roof.

The city looked no better from above. Certainly he'd seen worse than these derelict tenements, bracketed in by broken streets and garbage barricades, but he had no love for La Libertad--like most wartorn cities in the world, he had bad memories of the place.

He hopped the three feet to the next roof and made his way quickly back to the street he'd met his two mestizos on. They were still there, only they looked more bored now. Making sure to cover the light from the coal of his cigarette with one hand, the man had a seat where he could keep an eye on them.

He pulled a tiny foam earplug from the pocket of his coat, inserted it into his ear, and tapped on it.

"Lyd," he said, and his accent was now more Whitechapel than Middle America. "How we doing, love?"

"As well as can be expected," Lydia Del Ruiz replied. She was peeking through the heavy drapes of a dark bedroom at the two large men who waited on the street outside. They hadn't moved in the last ten minutes, but it didn't look like they'd heard anything unusual from her room. If they had, they would have been up here already.

The room was utterly black, but she'd been in it long enough for her eyes to adjust. She looked around at the fat, dark-skinned man lying across the room's single bed, and wrinkled her nose. His mouth was taped shut, but he was staring daggers at her.

"I managed to drag Lourdes away from the Blackjack table for some fun. He's indisposed at the moment."

"You tied him up before he got too friendly, didn't you?"

Lydia smirked as she pulled a black jacket over the revealing red dress she was wearing. "I didn't know you cared, Wisdom."

"I don't. Just making conversation."

"Well, he managed to cop a feel before I got his hands tied--and I'll be washing for days to get that out, thank you very much--but no. I wasn't required to go beyond the call of duty." She gave the bloated, bound man another look. "I couldn't find anything in his wallet."

"Shit!" Peter Wisdom hissed. "Well, that would've been too easy, wouldn't it? Fine, then. You know what to do next?"

"Yeah. Wish me luck."

"Always. Go get 'em, Shadow."

There was a click, and the line was silent. Lydia moved across the room to the fat man's side and had a seat on the side of the bed.

<"You've probably realized that I'm not actually a call girl, Senor Lourdes,"> she said. <"What I am is a representative of certain parties who fear you may be trying to extend your power beyond the simple trafficking of street drugs.">

Lourdes glared at her, sweat glistening on his thinly-haired scalp despite the fact this was one of the few buildings in this city with air conditioning. His large nostrils flared over the silver-gray swatch of duct tape covering his mouth.

She reached into the pocket of her jacket and pulled out a thin strip of dull-black. She pressed a stud on the side and five inches of honed steel sprang out of the end.

<"Mr. Lourdes, we're not leaving until you tell me what I want to know. And personally, I don't care how much of yourself you leave behind when we do.

<"So let's get started shall we?">

Wisdom tapped the earplug again, still watching his friends down on the street. "Everybody get that?"

"Loud 'n clear," came back four times, from four different voices.

"Looks like we're gonna have t'do this the hard way, then. Mav, how close're you?"

"Circling at 10,000 feet. We can be at the dropoff two and a half minutes from 'go'. Just waiting for the word."

"Terry?"

"I'm three blocks away. At 10 o'clock from your position."

Wisdom turned and looked. There was no chance of spotting Terry at that distance, not as dark as it was, but he found her general position across the rooftops.

"You all know the drill. Terry, all they've got up front is two guys with older model M-16s. Any other defenses are gonna be deeper in the building, so Mav's team: you take note."

"Roger that."

"You start headin' our way now. Terry, count to 100, then you do the same."

Terry gave an "Aye", and then the line went silent again. Pete Wisdom stubbed his cigarette out, considered lighting another one, and decided against it. He considered checking in on Lydia, and decided against that too. The next two minutes stretched out interminably. It was all he could do to keep from looking at his watch. He knew this feeling, knew how time could dilate in the middle of what was about to become a nasty situation, but he'd never gotten used to it.

Then he heard it. A high-pitched, high-volume cry approaching over the rooftops, climbing until it was almost unbearable. A Siryn's scream.

Terry was on her way.

Theresa O'Rourke rocketed across the city of La Libertad, held aloft by the wavelengths created by her mutant sonic scream. She was clad all in black, her fire-red hair bundled up beneath the mask that covered her pale Anglican face, and so she was nearly invisible to those on the ground as she shot above them at barely 600 feet.

But if they couldn't see her, they could damn well hear her.

She spotted the two friends Pete had made out front of the target building as she soared overhead. Both of them had moved out into the empty street, craning their necks to see what was making all the noise, and both of them had unslung their rifles, holding them close to their chests, ready to shoot at anything that moved, probably. They never even saw her. She shot by, soared three blocks away, then turned and headed back for another pass, angling slightly away from the building this time and hopefully dragging the attention of the gunmen and anybody else on the street away for just a moment.

Right on cue, a sleek black aircraft dropped out of the clouds directly above the target building.

"Everybody check your straps," Katherine Pryde said. "We're only gonna get one chance at this, and it's not like any of us are packing 'chutes."

"This is the most uncomfortable goddamn thing Ah've been asked to do since Ah joined this outfit," Marcus Raven said. "No offense, Maverick."

David North, codenamed Maverick, looked back over his shoulder at his teammate. The three of them were all strapped together with tandem skydiving gear. Maverick was in front, then there was Marcus, and Kitty was bringing up the rear.

"None taken," David said with a grin. "Just don't get any funny ideas, strapped in behind me like that. I've seen you checking out my ass in the shower."

Marcus gaped. "That is--Ah am straight as an arrow, mister!"

"Sure, Marc, keep living in denial."

"Ah think you're livin' in wishful thinking..."

"Guys, can we focus here?" Kitty asked from the back. "I've got a great view of both your butts, and they're not all that."

"This from the woman who dated bony-ass Pete Wisdom..." David said, but fell silent. Marcus muttered something about, "He started it..." and then he quieted as well.

The cargo door to their left trundled open of its own accord, and a new voice--the voice of the pilot--sounded in their earplugs.

"Infil team, you are a go."

Below them, a landscape of rooftops and narrow streets appeared, familiar to each of them after endless study of satellite maps. They could hear Theresa distracting the locals somewhere nearby, and once they'd fixed on the building they were headed towards, each of them took a moment to try to spot Pete on one of the adjacent rooftops. Only David, up front as he was, managed to spot him.

"We're a go," David confirmed to the pilot, and then he and his two teammates leaned simultaneously to their left, toppling out of the cargo door together and falling into space.

They plummeted toward the building, stacked together, all their arms and legs flared out to slow their fall. On top, Kitty Pryde activated her mutant gift, allowing herself to go intangible. The power spread consciously through her contact with Marcus, and through him to David, and suddenly all three of them were as solid as smoke on the breeze. The drastic change in distribution of mass slowed their descent, but they already had a great deal of momentum, and they continued to plunge toward the building at bone-crushing speed.

"How many floors did this thing have again?" David called back. When the question was met with stunned silence, he laughed. "Just kidding!"

They hit the roof, and their phased molecules slid right through the solid matter. A series of snapshot images flashed by as they plunged rapidly through the building. An empty dirty room on the top level, a young-ish man reclining in a bathtub and smoking a cigar on the level below that, a pair of toughs watching Nick at Nite on a beat-up television on the level below that, and on and on. They flashed through the floors so quickly, most of the people they passed didn't even see them, but some did. Enough, anyway, that this mission could no longer be considered 'covert'.

All the while, David--whose position placed him on bottom--counted down the floors. "Eleven...ten...nine...eight..."

A man and a woman having sex against a wall. Three armed men having an argument that looked like it may soon escalate into a gunfight. A dirty but fully functional and fully-manned chemistry laboratory.

"...five...four...three...two..."

An empty foyer with stairwell. A longer-than-usual pause as they passed through the thick layer of earth and concrete separating the ground floor from the basement.

"Now, Kitty!" David cried.

They slipped through into the basement, and as soon as they were clear, Kitty released Marcus' arms, willing herself solid at the same time. David, who'd tucked his legs up beneath him as they'd plummeted through the building, took the impact of all three of them hitting the basement floor. His mutant physiology converted the kinetic energy into stored bio-energy, completely negating the force of the landing.

Someone was screaming in Spanish. Several someones in fact. Kitty phased out of the harness the moment David had negated their fall, and in the next eyeblink, she'd crossed the floor and disarmed one of the room's five occupants. The man hadn't even had a chance to raise his weapon before she was breaking his wrist with a snap-kick.

"Go to sleep boys," Marcus said, and everyone in the room who wasn't an X-Forcer--including the man crying out in pain from his shattered wrist--did just as he said.

"Nice," David said, nodding.

"Y're welcome," Marcus replied, wiping at the thin line of blood that had erupted from his left nostril. He and David worked to disconnect their harness.

"What about the codes, Marcus? Did any of them know the deactivation sequence?"

"Nope, sorry, Kitty. I scanned 'em as soon as we were in. They know how to maintain the system, but not how to shut it down."

The three of them were in a tall-ceilinged basement room with plain concrete walls and dirt floor. There were several tables lined up against one of the walls, each of them with a PC sitting atop it. Three of the men Marcus had just sent to dreamland were slumped over these tables. As Marcus and David were taking this in, Kitty was pulling one of the unconscious men away from his keyboard and dumping him on the floor.

"What's the word, Kitty?" David said, drawing a sidearm while Marcus gathered up the harness and stowed it in a small pack on his back.

"This is definitely the control center. These computers are older than I am, though. I'll do my best."

"Marcus?"

"We got maybe two minutes before every able-bodied man in the building comes down on us." He paused, his eyes closed. "That's a whole lot of able-bodied men, by the way. More than we expected."

"How many?"

He shook his head, his brow knit.

"How many, Marcus?"

"Sorry...there's interference, probably from our target. Making it hard to concentrate..."

"We need numbers, man!"

"Around three hundred. Give or take."

David didn't bother to reply, he just tapped his earplug and linked up with his team leader. "Pete, this building is packed with enemy personnel. We're in the command center, but I don't think we're going to be able to accomplish anything before they're on us. We need some interference."

"And we need Lydia to get us those codes!" Kitty added.

"Right," Pete replied. "One round of interference coming up. I'll see what I can do about the codes. Cover your ears, children."

Ten white-hot knives of burning plasma arrowed down from the sky, blasting holes into the pavement around the two door guards. One knife hit a shallowly-buried gas line, and a wall of flame erupted along the pavement.

<"We're under attack!"> one of the guards squealed into a radio while his partner indiscriminately strafed the opposite roofline with bullets. <"We need assistance out front! Out front, damn y--">

A hot knife slashed through the radio set, nearly taking the guard's hand with it. He cried out more in surprise than pain and dropped the useless glob of melted plastic. At that moment, another knife went through the clip of his partner's rifle. Most of the rounds in it were slagged instantly and rendered useless, but the rest exploded, washing the gunman in flame and slamming him backwards into the wall of the building. He was unconscious by the time his smoldering body slid down to the pavement.

The other gunman, the one with the ruined radio, turned and caught sight of Pete Wisdom descending from the opposite roof, lines of fire extending from his fingertips to slow his fall. The guard recognized him instantly as the 'drunk' American and, snarling, raised his gun and drew a careful bead on the man.

And that was when the siren call returned. His eyes flicked upward at the noise, just as he was about to pull the trigger, and a solid wave of sound hammered him flat into the street. His finger pulled convulsively on the trigger, but the round flew well off target.

"Thank you, luv," Pete said. He'd reached the ground and was now lighting another cigarette. The black overcoat he'd been wearing earlier had been doffed and now he was in his preferred fighting togs--black slacks, a rumpled white shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and a loosened black tie.

"Ye could've given me some warnin' ye were jumpin' off the flippin' roof, Pete!" Terry said, landing beside him. She tore off her mask, and her lovely face was twisted in exasperation and rising temper.

"Where's the fun in that?" He pointed toward the building. There were some lights on inside, and they could see silhouettes moving quickly in the windows. "Ready to do our rendition of Pulleine and Durnford?"

"Who?"

"Blokes in charge of her majesty's forces at Isandhlwana when 20,000 Zulus fell on 'em and wiped 'em off the face of the earth. Kinda the English versions of General Custer."

"Ah, right. I remember. Uncle Tom loved all that auld war business, especially the battles where England lost. I think he had the movie."

"So, you ready?"

"Sure I am. Long as these boys know we're playin' the Zulus."

You're surrounded by liquid. Immersed in it. Something thick and green, and you suppose it's meant to preserve you, but it feels a whole lot more like you're pickling in it instead. Just a big mutant pickle with withering delusions of humanity.

And you're not alone with the bubble-bubble of the oxygen pumps and the squish-squash of the fluid in your cavities. Not alone. You're in here with another, and even as you realize this other is sleeping, it abruptly wakes. Wakes and speaks to you.

"Marcus..."

"Marcus, you okay?"

Marcus Raven looked up at his teammate and friend, David North. Marcus knew that it was cool in this room, well within his comfort zone, but he was sweating badly. He felt light-headed too, and wondered if he was going into shock.

"It's the target," he said. "Broadcastin'..."

David's jaw set, and he turned toward their other teammate. "Kitty, how we comin'?"

"I'm trying to teach myself a dead language here, Mav! I'm going to need time."

Time they didn't have. He could hear the feet roaring by above their heads. Some of those would be headed off by Terry and Pete. But all of them? As attractive as the idea was, David didn't find it very likely.

"Marc, listen to me. I need you to pull it together man. You hearing me?" Marcus nodded. "Can you operate your weapon?" David pointed to his slung rifle, and Marcus nodded again. "We need to draw these guys away from Kitty, and that means we gotta go out there..."

"Unacceptable!" Kitty cried from the other side of the room, but her fingers didn't slow down in their dance across the keyboards.

"He's right," Marcus said. "This is the backup plan, remember? If Lyd couldn't get the codes, we were gonna have to run interference for you."

"Marcus, you're sick!"

"No he's not," David insisted, helping Marcus to his feet and locking eyes with the man. "He's right as rain. Aren't you, Marc?"

Marcus gritted his teeth. "As rain. You know it."

"Think you can track the objective and fight at the same time?"

"I think I'd better."

"Good man." David patted Marcus' shoulder and turned toward the door. "Kitty, we're going to start heading for the target. Hopefully we'll be able to draw all of the fire away from you, but just in case..."

"I can take care of myself, Maverick."

"Don't I know it. Let's go, Marc. I'm in front, but remember--no checking out my ass."

"You wish," Marcus said, and then the door was open and they were moving quickly out into the hall and the melee that awaited them there.

Jorge Fuentes had worked for his third cousin, Domingo Lourdes, since he was six years old. At the time, that had involved taking messages and, occasionally, small shipments from one side of town to the other. When other children were learning how to read, Jorge was pedaling several thousand dollars worth of narcotics across town on his tiny bicycle.

He'd moved up in the organization over the years, though never in the direction he'd wanted. He wanted to be one of Lourdes' gunmen. His enforcers. Perhaps one day he could work as the great man's bodyguard--Dios, he owed his cousin so much, he almost longed for the chance to take a bullet for him--but Lourdes had seen the boy's potential in other areas, and had instead trained him in the labs, processing and cutting the drugs that were the lifeblood of their operation and, to a lesser extent, their city. It was not precisely what Jorge wanted, but at least he was allowed to continue serving Jefe Lourdes.

Jorge often brooded on this, and he was doing so on this night, when one of el Jefe's enforcers came bursting into the lab, his gun raised, crying that they were under attack, that they needed all able men to arm themselves and meet the enemy on the ground floor.

The other chemists began to object, but Jorge didn't hesitate for a moment. He set down his equipment and moved to pick up a rifle. He moved past the enforcer, ignoring his imprecations and his cries of "Coward!" toward the men who hesitated, and darted out into the hall, joining the tidal wave storming toward the stairwell and the bottom of the building.

He reached the ground floor, and turned with his fellows to move toward the front door, ready to follow those that had preceded them out onto the street, to meet this enemy with all appropriate violence and bloodshed.

And that was when the front wall exploded inward.

Jorge was thrown backwards, felt his skull creased by the butt of one of his fellows' rifles. Blood flowed into his eyes, and it took him a moment to clear them. When he could see again, he witnessed a stunning red-haired woman and a hard-eyed man--both of them white--striding through the hole in the wall. The man fired lines of fire from his fingertips, and the woman's very voice battered through the opposing ranks of men.

Neither of them were firing bullets, but Jorge didn't think the method of his sacrifice mattered too much in the greater scheme of things.

He raised his rifle, and rushed to join the fray.

Maverick and Marcus hit resistance almost as soon as they entered the hallway. Fortunately, Maverick had a lot of kinetic energy stored after their landing, and he unleashed it at the surprised horde streaming down the narrow corridor. The line of dark-skinned men fell back under the onslaught, and Mav and Marcus bolted down the corridor in the opposite direction.

"Think they'll leave Kitty alone?" Marcus asked.

"We have to make sure they do," Maverick replied, popping a few shots from his sidearm off over one shoulder. "Are we heading in the right direction?"

"Yeah, I think so."

"Watch where we're going for me."

Maverick whirled and began firing back into the enemy lines, running backward while Marcus called out turns in the hallway. Finally, the corridor ended in a door, and Raven called a halt.

"Stairs?" Maverick asked.

"Yup. Down."

"Go, I'm right behind you."

Marcus pushed the door open, ignoring the bullet that whizzed by his ear as he ducked inside. The stairway was black, and suddenly he was in the water again, amid the burbling oxygen pumps and the achingly-familiar voice saying his name.

No. Stop. Shake it off. You're gonna get David killed.

"Marc?"

"Down," Marcus repeated, and managed a grin. "Follow me. And no checkin' out my ass."

"Oh, you dinosaur piece of shit!" Kitty Pryde slammed her hands down on either side of the keyboard. The operating system was simple to the extreme, which meant there was very little chance of finding a back door into the controls. Which further meant they were screwed unless Lydia could get the codes.

Someone was pounding on the door, shouting in Spanish. Kitty didn't even look in that direction. She'd moved one of the heavy oak tables against the door after Marcus and Maverick had left.

She tapped her earplug. "Pete. I've done all I can. I need those codes, or we might as well just pack up and go home."

"Can't talk right now, luv," Pete Wisdom said. A couple of gun-toting natives managed to slip past the wall of sound Terry had put up, and he zipped them both in the legs with his hot knives. "Trying not to kill too many people up here. I'll let you know if Lyd calls back. Until then, just hold the fort. We're working our way down to you."

Marcus led the way down the stairs, careful not to stumble in the dim light. Maverick popped a glowstick to help light their way, but it didn't help very much. Somehow, they managed to make it to the very bottom of the stairwell without breaking any ankles.

They were standing in front of a rusted metal door. Water pooled on the concrete at their feet, and warm hungry things chittered in the walls. The temperature had dropped to somewhere around fifty-five degrees.

"Christ, it's like a dungeon," Maverick said. He raised the glowstick toward a hole high in the wall, and frowned in distaste when he saw the interior was lined with squirming cockroaches.

"That's just what it is," Marcus said. "Target's inside."

Maverick nodded and looked back up the stairwell. "Hey. Where did our friends go?"

Marcus looked around. They'd descended maybe two more levels to get here--he wouldn't be surprised to find out they were at the absolute lowest point in urban La Libertad--and sometime during the descent, all sound of pursuit had ceased. This surprised Marcus Raven not at all.

"Think they're afraid of what's down here?"

"No," Marcus said. "In fact, I know they're not afraid. Though after today, maybe they will be."

"Then why aren't they chasing us anymore?"

Instead of answering, Marcus reached out a hand and clasped David on the shoulder. David began to turn, but before he could complete the movement, his eyes rolled up into his skull, he muttered "Marc...", and he collapsed backward onto the filthy stone stairwell.

Marcus snorted a line of blood back up into his sinuses, then crouched down, seized Maverick by the arms, and hefted the smaller man onto his shoulders. He kicked the metal door open--he knew it wouldn't be locked--and strode into the room beyond.

The concrete cube he found himself in was suffused with an emerald light. If anything, it was even colder in here, and Marcus saw vermin moving into the shadows at his explosive entrance--moving, but not too quickly, as if they weren't too frightened of the new arrival. This place was theirs, after all.

Theirs. And hers.

Standing in the middle of the room, surrounded by a wall of neglected monitoring equipment, was a tank full of bubbling green liquid. And suspended in the center of that tank was a dead woman. At least she looked dead. There was no hint of respiration. Her skin was smooth as polished marble save for an ugly black hole on her left breast, right over her heart.

Marcus set Maverick down, being careful to put him somewhere he could keep the man in sight--he didn't want the rats to start getting any funny ideas--and when he straightened, he found the dead woman's eyes were open. And she was staring at him through the glass.

"Hello Bonita," Marcus Raven said. "Been a while."

<"She was my cousin,"> Domingo Lourdes said, the switchblade hovering in front of his right eye.

Lydia Del Ruiz cocked her head to one side. <"I know that, Senor Lourdes. And I don't care. All you have to do is give me the codes to deactivate the equipment you've got her hooked up to.">

Lourdes licked his bare lips to wet them--he'd lost some skin from his mouth when Lydia had ripped the duct tape away. He was nervous and sweating, and he stank badly. Lydia wondered briefly if the man was stalling. Already they'd been in here for nearly half an hour. If his men were used to him finishing with his whores quickly, it probably wouldn't be much longer before they grew suspicious and came up here to check on him. Lydia was confident she could take the bodyguards, but she didn't want the complications a fight would create.

She also had no desire to start cutting this man, but he was turning out to be a harder nut to crack than she'd anticipated. She lowered the knife toward his face, pressing the point into the soft flesh below his eye. He tried to twist away, but his arms were tied above his head, pinning it in place.

<"She was my cousin, and I kept her alive after that boyfriend of hers shot her. She would be dead if not for me. I have a right to--">

<"To use her mutant abilities to traffic your poisons, as well as to hook her up to machines that will kill her if they're deactivated improperly. Yes, I'm sure you believe that. So...the codes, senor.">

<"You--you think you are battling the evil of the drug trade, but if you remove her, you will destroy the sole source of income for half the families in this city! I--">

<"The codes!"> Lydia hissed, and a bead of dark red appeared where the tip of her knife met the man's face. Then, to get her point across further, she reached over his head with her free hand, grasped the edge of the headboard, and crunched it in her grip. Lourdes' eyes widened.

<"The--the codes..."> he agreed, and started talking.

Marcus...

"You look like hell, Bonita. I ain't gonna lie."

Help...

"That's what I'm here for. I need you to--"

Before Marcus could say another word, he felt a peculiar rushing sensation, as if his body was shrunken down to a pinpoint, squeezed through a very tiny hole, and whisked back up to full-size on the other side, all in the immeasurable moment his eyes were closed in a blink. He gasped and took a step backward.

"Can I help you, senor?"

He was no longer in the dungeon below La Libertad, and he was no longer wearing his black SHIELD-issue gear. Instead, he was dressed in a natty sports coat and slacks. In front of him, Bonita stood in a red evening gown that played hypnotically off the dark copper of her skin. Similarly well-dressed bodies moved all about them, chatting in low tones while a band played soft jazz in the background.

Marcus' line was in his throat before he'd even realized what was happening. "Yeah, maybe you can. I'm looking for a fella name of Gutierrez."

"Armando, you mean?"

"You know him?"

"He is my fiancée." She laughed softly, not unkindly, and Marcus wondered with embarrassment if she'd seen the wave of disappointment sweep across his face at this news. "He is speaking with a very important visitor at the moment. Perhaps I could give him a message?"

"Yeah, you tell him Marcus Raven's here to see him. Tell him I ain't gonna wait long either. And tell him..." He paused. In the heat of the moment, he'd been about to say, 'And tell him he's the luckiest man in El Salvador', but that kind of line only worked in Bond movies. And lord knew he was no James Bond. He was just a counterterrorism agent for the FBI, a low man on the totem pole.

"Yes?" Bonita asked.

"Tell him he has a lovely home," Marcus finished lamely, and the background swirled around him, supporting characters spiraling into incoherence before being replaced by filthy walls in a filthy apartment in downtown San Salvador. The place he'd lived for the three weeks he'd acted as Armando Gutierrez's field liaison. He was opening the door, his hand on the pistol concealed beneath his untucked shirt. And standing outside was Bonita, looking much the same as she had that first night. Even the simple jeans and the dark sunglasses couldn't make her look common.

"Armando sent me," she said, "to tell you he can't make your meeting today. He said...he said he has a dentist appointment."

Marcus nodded calmly, though inside his guts were boiling. Gutierrez was his mole inside the Atlacatl Battalion death squad, under a particularly ferocious commander named Ramon Fuentes. "Dentist appointment" was a code that told Marcus that his mole thought Fuentes might suspect something.

Bonita had not turned to leave yet. She was frowning, holding a handkerchief in one hand. She seemed to have been crying.

"Would you--would you like to come in?" Marcus asked.

"Who are you? What is your business with Armando?"

Marcus was stunned. She seemed furious, on the edge of tears again.

"I ask him about you, and he loses his temper always! Tells me to butt out, to stop being such a woman, and we used to...used to--"

Marcus couldn't say later what made him do it, but as she railed against him, he reached out and very gently plucked the sunglasses off of her face. Her left eye was swollen and black.

"Did he do this to you?" Marcus asked.

"Who are you?" she asked again, her voice breaking with emotion.

Somebody who's about to do something very stupid, he thought, and then he pulled her into his apartment and embraced her. The embrace dissolved into a kiss, and that would dissolve into something more minutes later.

Marcus stumbled back from her. "That's...that's enough, Bonita. Cut it out."

Happy, she said in his mind, reaching out to him. The apartment was gone again, replaced by a long, bleak landscape with a great purple bruise of sky overhead. Strange shapes took form and vanished in the distance, and uncertain forms glided out there on the edge of vision. Marcus knew this place well, though he'd never visited it in quite this manner. They were on the psi-plane. And those confused, indistinct shapes walking around out there were the men who had been following him and David down the stairwell back in La Libertad.

"I'm here to get you out, Bonita. But we don't have time to relive our greatest hits. Do you understand? I need you to tell me how to get you out of that tube."

No...dead...

"You ain't dead yet. I don't buy it. Fuentes got you into that machine in time to keep you alive, and you've got enough psyche left to use your mutant gift."

Marcus...

He was talking more quickly now, an unpleasant feeling of desperation forming at her unexpected resistance. "I work for people who can help you. But...I think they just want to turn you into a lab rat, Bonita. It'll be a better life than this, but not by much. I think I can get you away from here though, away from your cousin and away from SHIELD, and still get you the help you need. But that's a big 'I think'. You gotta tell me what you want, girl."

I want...

She had turned away from him, looking out over the psi-plane. She wasn't really there, Marcus knew. Not like he was. She was still back in the lab, naked in that tank. But she had used her abilities to suck him physically onto the psi-plane. An amazing talent, one that Bonita hadn't suspected years ago during the three weeks she and Marcus had known each other. With this ability, she could move literally anything anywhere, simply by putting it on the psi-plane and pulling it out again anywhere in the physical world. Possibly one of the greatest mutations in homo superior history...and her shortsighted cousin was using it to traffic his drugs.

She was looking at him again, those dark eyes of hers trying to swallow him, and he knew her answer before she said anything.

I want you to kill me, she said.

The woodpecker tac-tac-tac of Kitty's fingers racing over the keyboard--the damn computer was so old it didn't even have a mouse!--was accompanied by an almost-constant stream of profanity from the young woman. She could curse almost as well as she could fight when the proper inspiration struck (after all, she'd learned both skills from one of the best) and inspiration was striking like a jackhammer at the moment.

The enforcers and gunmen were pounding at the door. She hoped Marcus and David were alright, because both had stopped communicating via the earplugs minutes ago.

"Kitty, are you receiving?"

She paused. "Lydia? I hope you've got good news..."

"The best. I've got the codes. Are you ready?"

Kitty hit ESC a couple of times, then repositioned her fingers over the keyboard. "Let's hear it."

A roar of gunfire ripped through her concentration, and Kitty spun in her seat. The handle and latch on the room's door had been blown to splinters, and half a dozen men were throwing their shoulders into pushing the portal open, shoving aside the heavy table Kitty had moved against it.

"Hold on, Lydia." She leapt from her seat, ready to engage the men as they streamed into the room. But the man in the lead--a handsome boy who looked even younger than Kitty--lunged in with his machine gun roaring.

"NO!" Kitty went intangible, feeling the bullets pass harmlessly through her just before they reached the computers at her back, chewing them--and all their lifesaving potential--to pieces.

"Have you listened to a word I've said?" Marcus demanded. "You don't have to die!"

The Bonita standing in front of him on the psi-plane shimmered, and a black hole appeared on the upper left portion of her chest. Through her blouse he could see that it was tinged blue around the edges. It did not dribble blood. It was the killing wound on a dead body. She smiled sadly and put a hand to his face. Her touch felt like cold electricity.

Can't live...with no...heart...

Marcus felt tears sting his eyes, and the psi-plane whisked them away from his physical face, gave them dove's wings, and sent them capering toward the vast horizon. "Bonita..."

She shuddered suddenly, her eyes going wide. She took two stumbling steps away from him, and put the hand that had lately been on Marcus' face to the hole in her chest.

When she lifted the hand, her palm came away bloody.

"Bonita?"

Can't...live...

The psi-plane split down the middle, sending Marcus and Bonita and all those wandering gunmen careening into an unknowable void beneath. Marcus reached out for Bonita as he fell, but she slipped through his fingers like quicksilver, and he was left to fall alone.

"Stupid!"

Elbow to one goon's head while the opposite foot goes into his friend's groin. Phase in time to avoid an incoming fist.

"Trigger-happy!"

Go solid long enough to grab another guy's rifle. Phase it out of his hands, then solidify and swing the butt into his head.

"Idiots!"

Phase again as a hail of gunfire rips past, tearing into some of the gunman's friends who are standing behind you. Resume focus as an incoming crackle of static on the earplug almost distracts you.

"Kitty, we're in the basement, working our way toward you. How you