Chapter 3

There were so few dupes.

It was the first thing that Bobby noticed when he woke the next “morning.”

Well, no, the very first thing he noticed was that his foot had fallen asleep. But almost so quick that it came first was the realization that there were fewer dupes.

When he counted them, he realized that almost nine were missing, excluding the original Jamie, who was also still missing. Naturally, there were no appearances of their captors.

Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse.

You shouldn’t be so irreverent. Your boyfriend is missing.

Yeah, well, there’s nothing I can do about that from here, so . . . so . . . ohmygodihopehe’sokaybuthe’sgottobeokaysoi’msureheis.

Bobby rubbed his eyes and sat miserably, doing his best not to think about what might be happening.

“It’s okay, Bobby,” Warren said from his left, with a rustle of feathers. “I’m sure Jamie’s fine.”

Bobby looked up. “How’d you know I was thinking about that?”

Warren smiled his lazy, you’re-so-simple smile. “That’s what I’d be thinking about. And you keep sighing.”

Bobby scowled and set his chin on his folded up knees, staring across at where Jamie had been only a day before. The cell next to that was empty, as was the one next to that and--

“Sam?”

Bobby sat up and looked. Oh. That cell wasn’t empty; it had Sam in it. Sam was supposed to be at the mansion still.

This doodoo was getting deeper and deeper.

“Sam,” Scott repeated, louder this time.

The blond moaned and moved slightly, a buckle scraping on the tile floor.

Bobby’s eyes grazed over the rest of the cells, but no one else new had arrived. Just Sam. Bobby suddenly had a craving for chocolate cookies. Damn Sam’s mother and her constant packages of cookies.

Maybe there would be another when they got home.

“Sam, wake up,” Scott said in the distinct Leader Voice that Bobby knew so well. It was used on him whenever he was misbehaving, and almost always worked.

It apparently worked on Sam, too, because he moaned again and slowly lifted himself up on one elbow, his back to the others. “Whall,” he said, accent thick and his words slurred, “Ah think this is the plumb worst rescue Ah ever did try ta make.” He looked toward them, then, blond hair falling in his eyes.

Scott opened his mouth to say something, then stopped and shook his head. “I hope to God you have a plan, Guthrie,” he muttered beneath his breath. Bobby recognized the look he wore. It was the, “you’ve really screwed up this time, and I’m not going to chew you out here because it’s useless, but just wait until we get home, young man,” look.

Sam cringed and laid back down, cradling his head on his arm. He was blood spattered and bruised, but all his limbs seemed to be working as he shifted around to see the others better.

Bobby sighed and laid back against his bunk, closing his eyes. He hated waiting.

***

Another day went by before they saw anyone. And then it was Essex, a team of people behind him taking orders and packing up the medical equipment. Then they were gassed again, and when they woke the room had been stripped, Scott had a bandage on his arm covering what looked like a needle-hole, and all the Jamies had been shot, their skulls shattered and their insides making the floor underneath their bodies slick.

“Jesus Christ,” Bobby said softly, sick to his stomach. “What is going--”

Explosions were always sudden. It was the nature of them, Bobby knew, but it never ceased to surprise him. There were all those theories on how if someone was exposed to something enough, it would stop affecting them. So far, it wasn’t working.

It rocked the room they were in, and from the way the tile floor cracked he suspected it rocked the rest of the complex, too. The door shattered inward with a thunderous roar, shrapnel striking several of the closest people, who had already ducked and covered their heads.

“Hey, fellas,” a young female voice called from the newly made opening. “I hear you need a lift.”

“Meltdown! Good o’ ya’ll ta come,” Sam said, smiling brightly.

“Well, when the X-Men are in trouble . . .” the girl said, smirking and moving out of the doorway, giving the team behind her room to get in.

“Enough. Get them out,” Cable said in his Tough Guy voice, all low and grumbly. “We have no way of knowing where Sinister is.”

“Saved by X-Force,” Bobby muttered as Meltdown and Sunspot systematically started dissolving locks or blasting open cell doors. “We are never going to live this down.”

It was far too loud in the room for Cable to have heard Bobby‘s quiet words, but the man must have been picking up the thoughts; he looked directly at Bobby and raised both eyebrows, smiling dryly.

Bobby squirmed. I changed your diapers, you know! he thought as loudly as he could.

Jean, power inhibitor neatly removed by Warpath, chuckled.

“Not everyone is here,” Betsy said, walking in with a frown and her long violet hair pouring down behind her. “Where’s Madrox?”

Bobby’s unease returned with a vengeance. “Look through the complex,” he said at last. “They took him and shot the dupes. He must be here somewhere.”

Betsy nodded once, then turned and left the room with Rictor and Shatterstar in tow.

***

“What do you mean you didn’t find him?”

“Bobby, sit back down,” Cecilia snapped, placing a hand on his chest and pushing. Bobby collapsed into the chair with a ‘whoof!’ and continued to glare at Betsy.

If this was a joke, it wasn’t funny. “He has to be there!”

Betsy shook her head slowly. “We looked all over, Bobby. Cable and I both did telepathic scans after the rest of you had left, and the area was quiet. The dupes were dead, and there was no other living thing there.”

“Maybe he was unconscious--” Bobby started, about to get up but forced down by Cecilia's hand on his shoulder. “Or maybe--”

“He wasn’t there,” Betsy said softly.

Of course he was there. He had to be there. The thought that he might not be there was just ridiculous.

“Is Cable on Cerebro, by any chance?” Bobby found himself murmuring. Jamie was fine. There were only twenty-three dupes there; unless Jamie and all the other dupes had been killed, and all at exactly the same time without being able to reproduce another dupe, Jamie was alive.

“He is.”

“Oh.” Then there was really nothing left to do. Really. Unless he could go out and look the old fashioned way, which was a great idea--

Cecilia was glaring at him. Bobby relaxed back onto the table, and waited for her to finish the medical exam.

“Why would Sinister take all of us, anyway?” Bobby muttered to himself. “Especially since he didn’t do anything to the rest of us.”

“Took my blood,” Scott grumbled, taking little bites out of sugar cookies. “And it was probably just because it was easier to keep a rescue from happening that way.” He sighed and glared at the sugar cookie as if it had done something evil. “Who knows, with Sinister.” Scott looked up, eyes unreadable behind his sunglasses. “I’m sure Jamie’s fine, Bobby. He was in the government doing exactly this, and they dealt with Sinister more than once. He knows how to stay out of trouble.”

Bobby slumped miserably on the table.

“And Sam,” Scott said, narrowing in on the young man who sat on the other examining table while Hank gave him a once-over. “We need to talk.”

Sam cringed. Bobby cringed too, in sympathy. In fact, even Hank slumped down a little bit as if he were trying to hide his furry blue hide behind Sam’s scrawny whiteness. “It was a plan, Scott,” Sam mumbled.

“Part of this plan was getting beaten up and caught?” Scott asked.

“This is a medbay, gentlemen,” Cecilia warned, tossing a look at their leader, who ignored it. “Keep your voices down.”

“Actually, it was,” Sam answered Scott, looking at the floor between his dangling feet. “Ah called Cable with mah plan, and he said it would work. Hank an’ Ah talked it over first.”

Hank tried to hide even more.

Scott didn’t bother looking at the blue doctor, but his glare subsided a bit. It was amazing how well he could glare with sunglasses on, really. An art form in and of itself, Bobby thought.

“All right,” he said after a moment. “You led X-Force, and did a good job of it.”

Sam didn’t look at Scott, but his shoulders straightened.

“So what was this plan?”

Now he looked up, tossing blond hair out of his face. “Cable tagged me with a transmitter, an’ Ah got caught. X-Force and Bets chased me down, figurin’ that wherever Ah was y’all were, too.

“We had ta get the transmitter from Dom, ‘cause it needed ta be strong enough to withstand whatever Sinister was using ta cloak y’all, and it had ta be a dormant transmitter, so it didn’t get picked up--we used somethin’ else ta ping it with.”

Scott chuckled and shook his head. “Good plan, Sam,” he said, standing up and tossing the rest of the cookie in the trash.

“Hey!” Cecilia said, giving him the evil eye. “Sit back down! I don’t need you fainting from low blood sugar.”

Scott angled a dry smile over his shoulder. “I think I’ll live,” he said, and continued out.

***

There was the distinct sensation that he was in Trouble, but not much else.

At least, not until he started slowly realizing he was conscious. Then the Trouble sensation was joined by a dry mouth, a thick tongue, heavy limbs and a horrible headache. Jamie was pretty sure that Misery was having a party, and he was, unfortunately, the guest of honor.

Slowly, as feeling returned to his body and hearing to his ears, he realized he wasn’t alone, wherever he was.

And then someone hit him.

His first reaction was to suppress his power, and his second to let that power go; whatever dupe appeared would help him.

He felt the dupe separate, a pulling at the organs within his body, like they were all attached to a string and someone had given it a gentle tug. There was a sucking pop, then a crash and his own voice swearing.

“Imbecile,” a man muttered on Jamie’s other side. There was the hiss of air above his face, and then another crash. A sharp pain in the back of his skull told him that his dupe had just been hurt, but as he willed his eyes to open and his limbs to move, he realized he couldn’t.

His heartbeat sped up, and he heard the beeping of a heart monitor by his head speed up, too.

“Hmm,” the same coolly collected voice said. A moment later Jamie felt his thoughts slowing down, and heard the monitor slow as well. A moment after that, he passed out.

***

“Any sign of him?” Bobby asked quietly, clinging to the doorway.

Psylocke looked up from where she stood behind Cable, whose eyes were closed as he used Cerebro to scan for Jamie’s thoughts.

“Not yet,” she said, shaking her head. “Sam took a small team back out to the complex to see if they could discover anything.”

“You two,” Cable growled, eyes still closed, “need to either think a lot quieter, or leave the room.”

Betsy smiled slightly and ushered the distraught Bobby out the telepath-shielded door, closing it behind them.

“If you weren’t able to locate us telepathically before,” Bobby said in a whispered hiss, “what makes you think it’ll work this time?!”

Betsy glanced over her shoulder at the closed door, then edged Bobby farther away. “Before,” she said softly, “you were in a telepath-proof lab. Sinister had to move when he realized we were on our way. Hopefully, he relocated, at least temporarily, to a place not quite as well guarded.”

“And if you’re wrong?” Bobby said, glaring at the floor and shoving his hands in his pockets.

“Sinister didn’t even hurt Scott,” Betsy pointed out softly. “He won’t hurt Jamie.”

Bobby sighed.

***

Scott closed his eyes tightly, then slid his fingers up beneath his sunglasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose before letting his glasses drop and opening his eyes once more. He turned to a computer at his right and tapped out a set of commands. Static came through the speakers, and the roar of wind racing past at high speeds. “Any luck, Rogue?”

“None, Cyc,” she shouted past the wind. “There’s a rave goin’ on in an’ around an abandoned warehouse; that’s the drain on ’lectricity.”

Cyclops pursed his lips and frowned deeply. “Let me know if you get anything else. Over and out.” With a key command the connection cut and the static went silent. He paused, then tapped another few keystrokes. A line to Sam opened, the roar of the man’s blast shields the only thing Scott could hear. He waited a few minutes, knowing that a light would start blinking near Sam’s face and the man would stop flying as soon as he could.

Scott shuffled through paperwork and power charts, trying to pinpoint a spot where there were unexplained electric shortages recently. Often, they’d found that it meant someone had a lab there; they were hoping it would be Sinister’s.

“Howdy, Boss-man,” Sam said as the roar of his shields suddenly stopped.

“Cannonball. What’s the situation on the lab?”

“Ah think Ah might’ve found a lead,” Sam said, his voice excited. “Maybe not, but . . . well, Ah’m gonna follow it up, if it’s all the same to you.”

“Don’t take any risks,” Scott cautioned automatically.

“No sir,” Sam laughed. “Ah think Ah might’ve found where Threnody is right now--Ah’m just gonna see if maybe she’s got an idea where Sinister might be.”

Scott smiled slightly. “Good going, Sam. When do you think you’ll be back?”

“Well, Ah’m almost at Thren’s now, so . . . maybe late tonight. Before midnight.”

Scott nodded, then answered so Sam could hear him, “Sounds good. Make sure you turn your tracker on so I don’t have to worry.”

Sam chuckled. “Sure thing, Dad.”

Scott grinned reluctantly. “Over and out.”

“Over an’ out,” Sam agreed, and Scott cut the connection.

Things were going well, considering they had no idea where Sinister might have gone. It wasn’t as if there had been X-Men here able to track any fliers leaving the complex, and no one had thought to turn the computers on and do it automatically.

Unless . . .

Scott frowned, upset with himself for not thinking of it. He toggled the in-house intercom and waited for Cable to pick up.

“What?” the telepath snapped.

“Did anyone think to set detectors at Sinister’s complex, to watch for escaping aircraft?” Scott asked, ignoring his son’s rude tone. After all, Nate hated Cerebro, but had been on it all day.

“Of course we did,” Cable said grumpily. “But it came out as static. Sinister had some sort of scrambling device working. The man’s getting better.”

Scott sighed, agreeing. “Thanks.”

“Hmm,” Cable said only, and the line cut out.

Scott slouched back in his chair. How did one go about finding a single man on an entire planet? He shook his head and frowned. There was something he was overlooking. There had to be.

Elbows resting on the desktop, Scott glared at his power charts and world maps. If he were a genius with the ability to do whatever he wanted, and had kidnapped an entire team of super powered people who wanted to fight him, had gone so far as to scramble electronic and telepathic equipment except for the very basics--

Scott frowned. Why wouldn’t Sinister have scrambled a basic transmitter, like Sam had used, if he had scrambled every other kind of tracer?

Something was missing. He could feel it, like a buzzing in the back of his mind. He pushed against the floor, letting his chair roll over the tile until he’d gotten back to the computer with all the voice relays. Quickly, he dialed up Sam, then waited until the blast roar had stopped once more.

“Yeah?” Sam asked, sounding winded.

“Cannonball, what made you think a transmitter would work, if Sinister was scrambling electronics?”

Sam hesitated, and Scott could almost imagine the young man retracing his steps.

“Oh! Well, he wasn’t scramblin’ ‘em. He was just blockin’ certain things. Low tech ones didn‘t seem ta be on the list.”

Of course.

“Thanks, Sam.”

“Sure.”

Scott cut the connection without another word. A scrambler, to scramble everything the X-Men could possibly use, would drain too much power and make his location too obvious. But to just block out certain things, things that the X-Men were most likely to use, that wouldn’t need nearly so much power.

All right, Scott thought, so he’s doing things under radar; small enough that no one will notice. He needs to get somewhere fast to start blocking telepathy and electronics. He only had about twenty-four hours in which to move, and he would have needed something with a lot of room for all his equipment, but wouldn’t have used large aircraft as it would have been too noticeable. Scott dug through his charts, pulling up ones for the area they had been in. Driving or taking a train within twenty four hours wouldn’t have gotten Sinister very far, so he would have needed a place nearby. Someplace big enough to hold everything, but small enough to not require so much power that it would spike charts.

Scott eyed the area around where they had been found.

It was a desert.

The energy chart nearby was rolled into a cylinder, but Scott grabbed it and unrolled it quickly. There. There was power going to the desert, where there was nothing but sand and cacti. He hated cacti.

Scott rolled to the console, quickly recalling Sam and Rogue. This had to be it. And it if wasn’t . . . well, they’d find another spot. But this had to be it.

“Scott?”

He jumped at the unexpected noise, then turned and faced Bobby. “Yes?”

“I want to go find Jamie with you.”

Scott started to object, but was interrupted.

“I know the rule about not letting . . . ah, significant others go on rescue missions, but if you don’t let me go I’ll just find out where you’re going and take a mini-jet myself. And don’t think I won’t, because I will. Remember the time you told me I couldn‘t go to that party, and I said I‘d steal the car and go anyway, and then I did?”

Scott smiled reluctantly. “These are slightly different circumstances than an adult party at seventeen, Bobby,” he said softly.

Bobby’s look didn’t change. “It’s the same mule-headed stubbornness, though.”

Scott considered. Bobby stared straight back; not his usual tactic. Scott hated that look, because invariably it got them all in trouble. “All right,” he said shortly. “Call the others. We meet in the War Room in three hours.” That would give Rogue and Sam enough time to get back, though Sam wouldn’t be able to stop and shower.

***

He had woken, dropped back into the blackness of unconsciousness, woken again, and finally he laid in a drugged stupor, eyes open and seeing, able to hear everything around him, but without the ability to move or speak.

It was infuriating.

There was a buzzing in the back of his mind, an insistent sort of knowledge that his dupes were in trouble, and there wasn’t a blasted thing he could do about it.

When Vertigo entered the room, stepped quietly to his bedside, then picked up and dropped his arm, Jamie did everything he could to suppress his power.

It wasn’t enough. He felt the tug on his organs, the noise in his brain--and wanted to sigh with relief when nothing happened.

Vertigo frowned and did it again, and much to Jamie’s horror a dupe was born.

If he couldn’t before, and could now . . . then one had died.

Vertigo grabbed the dupe by an arm and dragged it lifelessly out the door. With a click the handle latched behind her.

**

Back to the living room
Back to Water Lines

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