Marie pulled against the leather restraints of the exam table. Her efforts didn’t even get a second glance from the doctor and nurse who were busily milling around her. They knew as well as she did that even in the unlikely event that she could escape the restraints, she wouldn’t get two steps with that collar around her throat. Still, she had her pride, and the futility of it didn’t stop her from fighting. That was one thing they hadn’t taken from her...yet.
“Dr. Cornelius.” There was a breathy deference in the usually-supercilious doctor’s tone that caught Marie’s attention. This was the first time she had seen this man, and the doctor was practically genuflecting in front of him.
He was a grey-haired man with glasses, slim and wiry. She could imagine him being someone’s orthodontist, or even pediatrician -- the kind who drank protein shakes in the morning and ran marathons on the weekends. When he turned his eyes toward her, however, she saw the coldness there. The doctor handed him her clipboard, her voice sickeningly ingratiating.
“This is the one you wanted to see...”
“Number 39,” Dr. Cornelius mused, his eyes flicking impersonally over Marie’s body. “The genetic anomaly.”
Genetic anomaly? Marie thought. What did that even mean...didn’t they all have the X-gene?
“What are you talking about?” she asked. “What does that mean?”
As usual, they ignored her. Dr. Cornelius stepped closer, his hands cold and smooth against her skin as he shined a light in her eyes, and then in her ear. She clenched her mouth shut but he expertly dug his thumb into the joint of her jaw, the pain forcing her mouth open as he peered deep in her throat, gagging her with a wooden tongue depressor.
The other doctor pulled up an image on the computer monitor. “Here’s the array,” she said. “We sequenced it by hybridization...”
The words meant nothing to Marie, the image a meaningless series of blobs and smears, but the two doctors leaned in, intent.
“How many variants?” Dr. Cornelius asked.
“Three. But the potential is...infinite.”
“Fascinating.” He straightened up.
“What the hell do you want from me? Why are you doing this?” Marie gritted out through her teeth.
His eyes flicked briefly to hers, and just as quickly away. “Get a few more skin samples,” he told the doctor. “We’ll have to discuss how to handle this one at rounds.”
He left the room without a backward glance as the other doctor picked up a scalpel and moved closer to Marie.
___________________
Click click click click click
“Fraaaaaaaaaaaiiiiilllll,” the rough voice crooned mockingly.
Click click click click click
“Wake uuuuuuuup, Frail.”
Marie’s eyes shot open, her breath gasping in as the ache of her stiffened muscles hit her in full force.
She felt a momentary relief, thinking the voice had just been part of her nightmare, and then...
Click click click click click
“Don’t keep me waaaaaaaitin’, Frail.”
She scrambled to her feet, keeping her back pressed up against the back wall of the cell. The dim lighting of the hallway silhouetted the giant, hulking figure against the bars at the front of her cell.
Was this it? she wondered. Had they finally decided she wasn’t worth it -- whatever they had been testing her for? Had she not made the cut, and now they were throwing her to Sabretooth like a biscuit to a rabid dog?
Click click click click click
He dragged his claws along the bars again, a stray beam of light catching the gleam of his sharp canine teeth as he smirked at her.
“That’s right, Frail.” He took a deep, showy inhale of her scent. “Fear me.”
She clenched her fists, taking a step forward. “Fuck you, furball.” She couldn’t help how emotion brought out the drawl in her voice, but she kept her spine stiff, her eyes steady. If he wanted her fear, he was going to have to work for it.
He chuckled, low and soft. “A fighter. I like that. Makes it more fun, when they fight back.”
She swallowed hard. “If you interrupted my beauty sleep jus’ to tell me tales of your illustrious history of murderin’ and rapin’, you shouldn’ta bothered.”
His smile widened. “Whatsa matter, Frail? My runt of a brother already bore you with those bedtime stories?”
She felt nothing but confusion for a moment, and then a nauseating rush of lightheadedness. Brother. It suddenly made sense...why Lehnsherr had been so anxious to meet Logan and make sure he didn’t remember Sabretooth. The strange coincidence of them both being feral and superhealers...
“I saw you pull him out of that water, Frail, and I smelled him all over you when they brought you in. Did you even know that -- how much you smell like him?”
He took another deep sniff, and then grinned. “Even now you reek of him. You must have sucked him into you good, huh?”
He suddenly lunged, reaching a long arm through the bars, and she couldn’t help flinching back even with twenty feet of space between them.
“It’s gonna be so good,” he crooned. “Watching you struggle as I’m fuckin’ you...makin’ you scream. It’s gonna be so much sweeter knowin’ it’s his girl I’m tearin’ apart. He may have marked you first, but I’m gonna put my mark all over you before you die.”
Don’t give him the satisfaction, she told herself sternly, even as the sickeningly vivid image he was creating burned into her brain. He was just taunting her again, if they had really given her to him he would be inside the cell by now...right?
“Yeah, yeah,” she drawled. “You’re so big an’ scary. Ya done now? I gotta catch my z’s.”
He chuckled again, and the smug sound of it froze her blood.
“Not yet, Frail. I brought you a present.”
She watched him warily, but he didn’t move -- just stood there with his dead black eyes on her. Then she heard it...the distant sound of boots. He watched her face carefully as the boots tromped down the hall, more slowly than usual, the scraping sound of an unconscious body even more pronounced than usual. Heavier.
She felt the blood drain from her face, her knees starting to tremble. “No,” she heard herself whisper.
Sabretooth smiled, his eyes drinking in every moment of her realization. “That’s right, Frail. The only thing better’n tearin’ you apart...” He paused, his shaggy head turning to the side.
Forge’s cell was on one side of hers, but the cell on the other side had been empty. She heard the door to it swish open, and couldn’t help herself. She ran to the wall, pressing her face to the crack between the panels, her fingertips digging desperately into the rubber surface.
She could just see him in the dim light -- his wide back bare and bloodied, his leather uniform pants torn. The guards dragged him forward, shackling his wrists to a hook midway up the wall. His head hung limply, his body held awkwardly in a kneeling position by his outstretched cuffed arms.
She couldn’t help the muffled scream that escaped her, panic driving all other thoughts from her mind. “Logan!”
Sabretooth chuckled again. “...is gonna be havin’ him watch.”
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Author's Chapter Notes:
Four days until my big deadline, and I'm doing exactly what I shouldn't...but oh well. All work and no play...
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Chapter End Notes:
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