Chapter Text
CHAPTER 156: CAGES AND A LITTLE GHOST
Hellfire base, Chicago. Cold air that smelled like bleach, hot metal, and money. Lights humming steady, like they were proud to be expensive.
The X-Men were hung like trophies.
Storm, Colossus, Thunderbird, and Logan sat inside shimmering cages of blue-white light that hummed against skin and bone. Every time Colossus even thought about steel, the field spat sparks at him like a jealous god. Storm lifted a hand and the field prickled her palm, punishing even the sensation of wind. Thunderbird tested a bar once with his shoulder and got a jolt that made his jaw lock and his eyes water. He didn’t try again.
On the far table lay Charles Xavier, strapped down with thick restraints, a web of wires feeding a steady electric sedation that kept his mind drifting just above darkness. His face twitched now and then, tiny storms crossing a sleeping sky.
White heels clicked and echoed. The White Queen inspected her catch as if she were shopping. Emotionless. Efficient. She paused at Logan’s cage and tilted her head.
“Such a noisy mind.” Emma said, voice cool as ice in a glass. “Even when your powers are stifled, you rage.”
Logan’s head was bowed, shoulders loose, breathing slow. He looked like a man who’d fallen asleep at a bus stop. His nose twitched.
‘Perfume: white flowers, musk. Under it, the same rot. Threat wrapped in ribbon. Field’s choking the healing back a notch, but the bones are still there. Smell’s still mine. Hearing’s still a blade.’
He raised his eyes, lazy. “Lady, if you can hear my thoughts, you already know I’m thinkin’ mostly about how much I hate your shoes.”
Emma’s mouth curved. “You’ll learn to appreciate taste.” She turned away, bored already.
A ripple against the far wall. Not air. Not sound. A girl coming through stone like it was fog.
Kitty Pryde appeared inside a pocket of shadow, hands clenched, breathing shallow. She stared, huge-eyed, at the cages and the table and the woman in white, and swallowed.
‘I should run. I should go home. I should get Mom. Dad. Someone. But they’re… they tried to help me. Storm—Storm was kind. Logan was mean but funny. The blue guy was… he was nice. Don’t cry. Don’t be a baby.’
She slid along the wall, boots making no sound. The world felt strange around her, like she was not quite here. Her heart wanted to pound loud enough to bring every guard running; her body refused, sinking her step by step through panic.
She reached Storm’s cage.
“Ms. Storm,” Kitty whispered, words almost invisible. “It’s me. It’s—Kitty. I—”
Storm turned, eyes softening so fast you could see the relief hit her. “Child. Brave girl.”
“I can get you out,” Kitty hissed. “I can—maybe I can pull you through the wall, or the bars, or—”
“No,” Storm said, the word a breeze gentling a flame. “Listen to me. You must leave. Go to a telephone. Call the X-Men. Tell them we are captured.” She slipped a thin metal tag from her belt pouch and pressed it to the field. It sparked and slid down to the floor inside the cage. “Take that number. Memorize it.”
Logan watched, still and quiet, head turned just enough to see without drawing eyes. He let his nose paint the picture he couldn’t look at: the girl’s adrenaline sharp. Storm’s calm lavender. Emma’s perfume fading down the corridor. Two guards at the door, cheap cologne and gun oil. Air vents pulsing warm. A hum through the floor like a heartbeat.
‘Kid’s got steel. Smells like fear and a little cinnamon. She runs now, she lives. She stays…’
“Go,” Storm said. “You’re not a soldier. Not yet.”
Kitty swallowed. “I’ll call. I promise. I’ll come back. I’ll—”
A barked shout from the corridor. Boots. The door slammed open. Three Hellfire goons in suits, guns up.
“There!” one yelled. “The little—”
Kitty bolted. Not at the door. Not toward them. She ran the opposite way, right to a blank stretch of wall.
Kitty hit the dead-end and didn’t stop. Her body went cold-hollow, a ripple like stepping into a deep pool. She passed through the wall and dropped to the floor of the corridor beyond, rolling hard on her shoulder. She gasped, scrambled up—
Goon hands pounded that same wall a heartbeat later, groping for a door that didn’t exist.
“Where’d she—?”
“She—she went through it!”
“No door,” another snarled. “Back around, NOW!” They thundered off the long way.
Kitty sprinted the other direction, tag clenched in her fist like a prayer.
Logan exhaled slow. He let his eyes close and angles sharpened in his mind—the base layout pulled from echoes, airflows, the echo of their footsteps.
‘Run, kid. Find the phone. I’ll be here when you get back. Won’t be pretty. But I’ll be here.’
He glanced at Emma’s retreating shape and let a fraction of his presence fold inward, the way the tiger-boy’s stealth trick learned to make heat and scent turn back into the body. The field punished anything “unnatural,” but this was just… quiet. A stillness so deep it changed how the air touched him. Not invisible. Just not there.
Emma turned once, eyes skating over the room. For a heartbeat they slid past Logan like he was furniture.
Then she was gone.
“Hold on,” Thunderbird muttered through his teeth. “We’re getting out, even if I have to chew these bars.”
“Please do not,” Colossus said hoarsely. “You will lose teeth.”
Logan’s mouth curved. “I like the spirit.” He let his head drop again, sensor-net of hearing and scent stretched thin, waiting for the kid’s return and the cavalry’s wheels.