Foxhunt (COMPLETE)

[Zero]

Zero crawled, spiderlike, up the side of the apartment complex on Thirty-second and Maple, nearly invisible in the shadows cast by the surrounding sky scrapers. His limb-mounted magnetic grapples made almost no sound at all as they alternately gripped and released the metal ventilation conduit that ran nearly the whole height of the structure; the vibranium fibers laced into his suit's joints canceled out most of the reverberations. Only the red cyclopian glow of his ocular sensor threatened to give him away, so he dimmed it, proceeding by feel and sound alone.

He was almost fifteen stories above the alley when he heard a rasping sound above him. He switched his ocular back on to catch the heat glow of a small humanoid clinging head-down to the sheer concrete wall. She stared at him in uncomprehending terror for one critical moment.

It was all Zero needed to pull a senbon from his utility belt and sling it into the girl's bicep just beneath the humeral artery. The needle's tranquilizer did its work quickly. As the girl fell silently from her perch, Zero performed a hasty risk/benefit analysis and decided to spare her life. He hunched down on his magnetized footholds and stretched out to catch the girl's slight body with one hand. She folded over his arm like dirty laundry.

Zero brought the girl closer to his ocular sensor. Scanning. Mutant DNA detected. Cross-referencing medical records. Subject identified. Connors, Jaime. Secretes adhesive fluid from hands and feet. Threat level calculated as negligible.

Satisfied, Zero draped Jaime over his shoulder and continued climbing up the duct.

It was only minutes before he reached his mark, a window on the seventeenth floor. The room inside was dark, and the window latch was locked. Slowly, Zero reached over his back, careful not to dislodge the sleeping girl, and drew his ninjato. He cut a neat wedge out of the upper pane with the adamantium blade and simply reached in to turn the latch. Replacing his sword, he dipped his kevlar-coated fingers in a tube of lubricant and smeared the stuff all around the edges of the window. It slipped open with barely a sound.

Still balancing Jaime on his shoulder, Zero stepped into the darkened apartment. His mark was not there. But she would be. He deposited the girl on the sofa and left the window open. Then he backed out of the light cast by the city glow outside and drew a handful of senbon. He could afford to wait.

He was a very patient hunter.

[Vigilante]

Exhausted from a long evening of ... being Vigilante... Ginny Hayes stumped down the hall towards her apartment. Key extended, she unlocked her door, flipping on a light as she turned to close and lock the front door behind her.

Turning back around the red-headed mutant blinked at the sight of Creep on the couch sleeping. The apartment was a sectioned off studio, and the entrance light she'd turned on only illuminated the door and the kitchenette properly. The couch and beyond were still fairly dim. Tsking, Ginny walked over to the window to close it. She'd have to speak with Jaime about invading her privacy, again.

As she touched the window she noticed there was something wrong. A hole cut into the pane. Suddenly hyper alert, Ginny 'ported a few feet, reappearing back towards the door.

[Zero]

Thok!

Three finger-long needles bit into the wood of the window frame just beyond where Ginny had been standing.

Zero stepped out of the shadows and spun to face the door. He ripped his sword and sheath together out of his shoulder harness and chopped them down toward his target - his instructions were to take her alive if possible.

[Vigilante]

Vigilante took one look at the red-eyed cyclops turning towards her, and 'ported again. A puff of purplish 'smoke' was all that the intruder chopped his sheathed sword through, as Ginny kicked him in the back with a booted foot.

Had the Mafia found out where she lived? Was Jamie alive? Ginny 'ported again, this time into the curtained off bedroom area.

[Zero]

The kick from behind staggered him momentarily, and by the time he wheeled around, the mutant was gone again. He switched his ocular to infra-red and identified the outline waiting behind the bed curtain.

Zero lifted his sword through the overhead light, shutting it off permanently. Then, with a thought, he shifted on his active camouflage and slowly moved toward the bed, the telltale shimmer of his cloak masked by the darkness.

[Vigilante]

Reaching under the bed Ginny grabbed her spare quiver, retrieving two of the arrows. One steel-tipped barb in each hand, she straightened in time to see the curtain moving, though not able to see what was touching it.

Acting more on battle instinct than anything else, Ginny lunged towards the movement, stabbing with the arrows. One missed, sending her off-balance. The other clunked into something hard as she fell into the curtain tearing it from where it was tacked into the ceiling.

[Zero]

Damage: right shoulder joint. Minimal armor penetration. No impact on motor function.

Zero ignored the arrow biting into his shoulder and seized as much of the cloth as he could to entangle Ginny as they both went down to the floor. Relinquishing his sword, he reached for another senbon with his free hand, hoping to stab the woman through the curtain before she could teleport away again.

[Vigilante]

She struggled with the curtain, a heavy body falling on top of her legs, and fought momentary panic. Ginny 'ported just as something scratched her arm, and fell to the ground on the other side of the room. Behind the couch she could feel the world closing in on her, and she tried to 'port again.

Exhausted from her previous teleports, and the long night she'd already had, Ginny gasped as blackness descended and passed out, one hand still wrapped around an arrow.

[Zero]

The mass underneath the cloth disappeared. Zero rolled to his feet and quickly scanned the apartment. He found Ginny's heat signature glowing from the other side of the couch, writhing lethargically before falling limp. The cybernetic assassin picked up his sword and approached her, wary of some trick, but she didn't move. A scan of her biosigns said she was unconscious but stable.

His objective completed, Zero slung his sword onto his back once more and retrieved his senbon from the window frame and Jaime's arm. He considered tipping the girl over back through the window, but he decided the noise could attract too much attention.

Zero fastened Ginny to his back with elastic cords, climbed back out the window, and began the descent to the alley below as if she weighed nothing at all.

[General Gideon Vasher]

Ginny lay restrained in a medical chair as she slept off the last of the sedative she had been given for the car ride. She was in an examination room furnished with portable equipment; it was sterile and brightly lit, but there was no disguising the reinforced concrete walls, the heavy-duty confinement straps, the large pane of one-way plexiglass. An IV drip ran into her right arm, and she was wired with heart and brainwave monitors. She was clad only in a hospital gown and a thick metallic collar that pulsed slowly with green lights.

The door - which had no handle on the inside - swung open to admit an orderly with a syringe on a tray. The young woman began sterilizing Ginny's exposed left arm with alcohol for an injection.

[Vigilante]

Ginny blinked her eyes slowly, vision blurry, as someone touched her arm. The crook of her elbow became cold, as air caught the alchohol that she could suddenly smell. Twisting her neck to the left, she yanked at her arm as memory came flooding back.

The orderly ignored her - Ginny was too well restrained to do more than shift her arm a centimeter or so - and continued her clinical minstrations. The mutant's breathing and heartrate began to skyrocket as the orderly held up a syringe and expressed any remaining air bubbles with a practiced squirt.

"Don't," Ginny gasped, eyes scanning the room to see if there was a likely place for her to teleport. Trying to go beyond the wall she could see would be probable suicide. The thought of rematerializing inside a wall was horrifying. "Please. What's going on?" She closed her eyes and concentrated on being somewhere else.

Nothing happened.

Frantic, Ginny opened her eyes and jiggled her arm in its restraints as the orderly bent over it with her evil looking needle. "Why can't I... what's going on!"

The other woman gripped Ginny's arm above her elbow, trying to hold her still. Finally she spoke. "If you do not remain still this will hurt a lot more."

Taking rapid, deep breaths, Ginny finally stilled her movements and the needle plunged into a vein.

[General Gideon Vasher]

The motion was deft and swift. The orderly swabbed away the bead of blood from Ginny's arm and swept back toward the door. An unseen arm held it open for her, then drew it shut again.

Ginny was alone for several long minutes before the door swung open again. In walked a man with a terrifying air of authority - a face like a granite statue of a scowling war hero, or an idol of a vengeful god. His silver hair was pulled back into a neat queue. He towered over the captive woman as he approached.

"Miss Virginia Hayes," he said, betraying a Texas origin. "Formerly Sergeant Virginia Hayes, Green Beret, one-hundred fourteenth infantry. Court-martialed and re-assigned to border patrol in South Korea. Honorably discharged and took up residence in New York City, where, coincidentally, no fewer than five prominent members of the organized crime community have fallen prey to a mysterious vigilante. Feel free to fill in anything I might be forgetting."

[Vigilante]

Feeling more than a little exposed in the small hospital gown, Ginny could only stare at the man who entered the cell. Finally she bit out, "Coincidences are known to happen."

She tried to 'port again, and again failed. "What do you want with me?"

---

Jaime opened her eyes and sat up, a scream on her lips. It died when she saw where she was, then threatened to bubble up to the surface again as she did a quick visual scan of Ginny's apartment. The girl hopped to her feet, swayed but kept her balance, and ran to the window as if she'd see the red-eyed monster carrying away her friend.

No such luck. Creep panicked, one hand sticking to the window as she tried to think. Call us if you need help. Her free hand went to her jeans pocket, fingering the well-worn business card stuck inside. Her yellow eyes reflected back at her as she looked out the window, and she made her decision.

Moving to the phone she brushed her black hair out of her eyes and picked up the handset. Pulling out the card she dialed the number written clearly on the back in red ink, labeled BROTHERHOOD.

[General Gideon Vasher]

The man paced away to inspect the health monitors, the wires that connected them to Ginny, the level of the bag over the intravenous drip.

"Let me try this again, it may be that my memory is not what it used to be. Virginia Hayes, mutant. Lone survivor of a roadside bomb attack because of her squadmates she alone possessed the capability to blink herself away from danger. A woman who lied on every medical form she's ever filled out so she could keep her genetic abnormality in the dark. Who resigned from the armed forces so she could pursue a quest of personal vindication. Now, am I striking a little closer to the heart of your condition?"

[Vigilante]

"What. Do. You. Want." Ginny growled. "I don't know what you're talking about." Nearly naked or no, she had been trained by the Special Forces and knew how to resist interrogation. "My service records are public, and if this is how you treat veterans you need to improve your bedside manner."

[General Gideon Vasher]

"I'm sure it means nothing to you, but I do regret having to treat a fellow soldier with such a heavy hand," he replied, walking full-circle around the examination chair. "It has always been my belief that serving this country is the highest honor any American can hope to achieve. I have brought you here, Miss Hayes, so that you may serve our country once again."

He stopped his circuit and removed his glasses. "You have a rare and wondrous gift. It saved your life in Iraq when five of your squadmates were killed. I'd like you to imagine for a moment that they were all as fortunate as you - that every soldier had an escape clause in his or her genetic code that could kick in the moment before certain death. Don't tell me it's impossible, because you're living proof that it's not. Somewhere locked inside your body is the key to instanteous, physical teleportation. That, Miss Hayes, is what I want from you."

[Vigilante]

Her face was still, but her mind was racing behind her impassive eyes. She'd already tipped her hand to whoever it was that had aprehended her in her apartment. And Jaime. If the girl was hurt... Ginny's face hardened at the thought.

"Even if what you're saying was true, exactly how would you get it from me?" She was sure she didn't want to know.

[General Gideon Vasher]

"Patiently."

He buffed his glasses lenses on his coat and replaced them delicately on his nose. "If you were a piece of foreign technology, we'd take you apart and rebuild you piece-by-piece, reverse-engineer you until we could build a prototype ourselves. With you, it won't be quite so straightforward. The best place to start would be to observe you in action - but then, there won't be much action as long as you've got that restraining collar around your neck."

He reached down and tapped the metal collar lightly - it was snug around Ginny's throat.

"You must have noticed its effects by now. Without getting into the details of how it works, this device suppresses your mutant ability as long as it's active. Without it, those restraints on the chair would be an exercise in futility. And yet without your powers, you're of little earthly use to me. I'm sure you can appreciate my dilemma."

[Vigilante]

She blanched a little in spite of herself at the thought of being reverse engineered. "How did you..." She'd been so careful. How had they observed her? Ironwood? No, she was certain her lawyer would never have given her up. Not willingly, that is.

"What do you want me to do?" Survive. That's what she needed to do right now and if she didn't cooperate for now she was certain that this cold bastard would take apart her brain himself looking for her mutant gene.

---

"Gyro here."

Jaime gulped at the gruff voice at the other end of the line, and stuttered, "H-h-hello, this is C-c-creep. I'm in t-trouble." She sniffed mightily, tears welling up in her luminous eyes.

"Creep.... oh yeah. What's the problem kid?" The voice was only marginally more friendly.

"I was attacked by, by a guy with one red eye. And he kidnapepd my friend Ginny, or maybe... maybe k-k-killed her." She did start crying then, blubbering into the phone. "I didn't know who-who... who else to c-c-call."

[General Gideon Vasher]

"Only what comes naturally."

He leaned over her and pulled the IV catheter from her arm with a surprising amount of care. "Your collar is centrally controlled; realize we can activate it or deactivate it at will. Also realize that it is equipped with an electrical feedback system that will kick in should you attempt to remove it. Now..."

The man pulled a small control device from his inside coat pocket. "When I press this button, you will be free to teleport wherever you wish. I'd advise against jumping through any walls, but there is an open room on the other side of that window."

[Vigilante]

Ginny narrowed her eyes, staring at the remote in the man's hand. "I prefer not to 'port to places I've never seen." There, she'd said it. Openly admitted with her own lips that she could teleport. "Suffice to say I don't exactly trust a man who sends someone to attack me at my own home, and hurts one of my friends in the process."

[General Gideon Vasher]

"Fair enough," the man replied. He tapped the control, and the lights on the collar stopped blinking.

"But whether you trust me or not, there is one simple truth you cannot change. If you do not teleport in the next five seconds, Miss Hayes, I will put a bullet through your thigh."

He drew an army pistol and leveled it at the thickest part of Ginny's leg.

"Four..."

[Vigilante]

Ginny took a deep breath, still fully restrained and strapped to the evil dentist's chair, and let it out slowly as the man counted down.

"Three..."

She didn't trust him. Didn't want to teleport on command. Didn't want to do a great many things.

"Two..."

She didn't paticularly want to be shot in the thigh either, and he'd probably shatter her thighbone in the process. As the bastard started to mouth the word 'one' and his finger tightened on the trigger, Ginny 'ported.

Her body disappeared into a cloud of purplish smoke, and there was a distinctive sound, bamf. Ginny bamf-ed back into sight, falling slightly from the far left corner of the room to land on unsteady feet. She clutched at the hospital gown and kept her back to the wall.

[General Gideon Vasher]

"Very good," the man said, holding his gun back in a relaxed grip - but the barrel was still locked toward Ginny's leg with a precision that said he didn't need to square up for his aim to be true.

Her captor stepped forward and picked up one of the diodes that had fallen limply to the chair when she'd vanished. The vinyl cushion still glistened with her sweat.

"Very impressive. Even more useful than sticking to walls."

He still held the control device in his left hand.

"Dr. Zajeda, you can come in now. Miss Hayes, we still have some tests to run, tests that require you to be in a lucid state. I hope I can count on your full cooperation."

The door swung open, and in came a pair of uniformed guards armed with nightsticks followed by a female doctor and an orderly wheeling a cart full of medical instruments. But behind them, Ginny could see a vacant room and a corridor bending off out of sight.

[Vigilante]

The door opened, she glimpsed open space and a long hallway twisting away, and Ginny took full advantage. With a bamf and a cloud of quickly disapating smoke she found herself suspended in the air in a half crouch at the furthest point she had been able to see from the cell. Behind her, the collar that had been snug around her neck fell to the ground in the cell with a metallic clatter. Before she could fall to the ground she 'ported again, further down the hallway. And then she 'ported once more, up to a doorway.

Dropping lightly to the ground, she found it locked, but there was an unbreakable window set into the security door. Shouts were starting up behind her, and Ginny risked a look behind her before 'porting to the other side and down the next hallway. There had to be a way out of this maze.

[General Gideon Vasher]

The two guards spun around to give pursuit, only to find themselves hampered by the medical cart - one of them swore.

"Wait," the old man said. "She's not going far."

He crossed the room and bent down to pick up the collar, which had just wobbled to a stop on the concrete floor. He smiled grimly.

"Captain Roche, signal your men to give the prisoner a wide berth. She'll be back in here in due time."

The man pressed another button on his control device.

[Zero]

In a darkened cell similar to the one Ginny had occupied, a coffin-sized capsule surrounded by medical equipment slid open, and a single red spot glowed in the shadows.

Freeing himself from his cybernetic umbillicals, Zero climbed out of his regeneration pod, seized his sword, and sprinted out into the corridor.

[Vigilante]

Three 'ports and another locked door later Ginny stopped and looked around. All the hallways seemed the same, and the doors that led off of them were windowless, and seemed to need keycards in order to open them.

Surprisingly she hadn't run into a single soul yet, but she was sure that would change. Ginny padded down the hallway, the tile cold on her bare feet, and brushed against a door that gave way as she touched it. She pushed inside, and left it open a bit behind her, turning around to see if she could find anything a little more suitable to wear.

It was a lab of some kind, and there were white lab coats hung up by the door. Ginny grabbed one and put it on, concealing the embarrassing gap in the back of the hospital gown she'd woken up in. ...Even more useful than sticking to walls. The man's words were echoing around in her head.

They must have taken Jamie as well, the poor girl was probably out of her mind with fear and God knows what torture they were putting her through. Ginny rummaged around in some drawers, looking for something sharp and finding a scapel.

Makeshift weapon in hand, she ducked back into the hallway, and ran down it looking for "You are Here" signs. Anything! 'Porting, Ginny could cover thirty yards in a single attempt, but there wasn't that much room here.

[Zero]

Doors and fluorescent lights flashed by as Zero sped through the corridors, comparing the facility map in his head to the computer's estimates of Ginny's trail. There were few places she could go on this level that weren't already locked down.

The cybernetic warrior skidded around a corner and caught himself on the far wall. There were footsteps coming his direction. He leapt straight up and braced braced himself spread-eagled against the walls and ceiling and camouflaged himself.

As Ginny rushed down the corridor, she saw a momentary shimmer right in front of her as an invisible boot swung toward her at face level.

[Vigilante]

There wasn't enough time to react, and Ginny was smacked in the face with something unyielding even as she tried to skid to a stop. As her body started to tumble backwards, it disappeared, only to reappear twenty feet down the hall in the direction she'd been running.

Slamming into the ground, nose bleeding and probably broken, Ginny didn't cry out. She scrambled to her feet, looking for anything in the apparently empty hallway. A shimmer at the corner she'd been rounding almost looking like the outline of a body, and she felt sure that her attacker was the same as the one who'd found her at home.

The walls and floor seemed to blur as the shimmer passed over them, and Ginny cast about for anything she could use as a weapon. All she had was the scapel, and she palmed it now, edge sticking from the bottom of her fist and pointing forward.

[Zero]

As Zero ran after the fugitive mutant, he shut down his active camouflage to conserve power. The ghostly shimmer became a metal and kevlar monster with one burning, red eye.

His objective was to disable her, not destroy her. As he approached, he leapt to the side and kicked off the wall, intending to strike her from an unexpected angle.

[Vigilante]

The metallic monster jumped up and then off the wall almost faster than Ginny could react, but when he chopped down at her the mutant was no longer there. He, well she assumed it was a he, began to land heavily due to the lack of expected resistance, and she materialized slightly above him.

It took a moment to orient herself, even though his trajectory had taken him to where she'd expected. As her body fell downwards, Ginny slammed down with her fist at the thing's great red eye. With the force of her body behind it, the scapel smashed into it, found resistance and stopped.

Ginny fell to the ground, her arm jarred all the way to her shoulder, the little blade still in her fist. She had just enough time to see that there was red blood on the end of it before she teleported away again, putting more room between her and the strange attacker.

[Zero]

Zero's ocular implant filled with static as damage reports flooded across his cybernetic brain. Ocular lens compromised. Servos six through nine destroyed. Primary ocular circuit damaged. Restoring partial functionality.

Half of the static resolved itself, but the image was poor - he could only see infra-red shadows, blobs of heat and cool. She now had the advantage of sight.

So Zero scanned his mental map of the compound, found a nearby fuse box, and tore out the fuse that powered the lights on this level. The corridors were plunged into darkness, which was quickly replaced by the lurid red glow of emergency lights.

[Vigilante]

The lights in the hall dimmed, flickered, and went out. A few seconds later the red emergency lighting came on, giving Ginny's surroundings the feeling that she were deep underground.

Maybe she was. Jamie. She had to find Jaime, and get the hell out of there. She flipped the scapel in her hand, and could still see the 'man' up the passage from her. He turned towards her, and she gathered herself to 'port.

Appearing behind him, she stabbed between his shoulder and his neck, hoping to hit a seam in his body armor.

[Zero]

The blade slipped along the smooth contour of his shoulder armor until it hit the softer fibrous mesh that protected his deltoids and bit into the synthetic material. But Zero felt no pain. His central processor instantly provided him with a detailed readout of the damage and a performance impact assessment.

He could have rolled with the blow and minimized the wound. But the flesh she'd attacked was thick with muscle, and the scalpel's small blade could not penetrate far enough to seriously compromise his motor responses. So Zero reached back and gripped her wrist harshly enough to cause pain, not quite harshly enough to break it.

He wrenched her hand away from the scalpel handle and twisted around to grapple with her. He wondered: if he held on to her tightly, could she still teleport away?

He would find out.

[Vigilante]

Pain shot up her arm from his hold on her wrist, and while he maintained it she was forced to let go of the scapel. Ginny's feet dropped to the floor as the man turned around to face her, attempting to put her in some sort of hold.

He was strong - very strong - and she gritted her teeth as he used his superior weight and reach against her. Wrist bent back to near breaking point, she fought against the pain for the concentration needed to teleport away...without bringing him along with her. If something was touching her, she could theoretically 'port with it, but...

With a scream of frustration, Ginny managed to focus, and the armored man's arms suddenly enclosed nothing. She collapsed to the ground several yards away, just in front of a door. A closed and locked door with no window.

[Zero]

Zero stumbled slightly as the weight in his arms disappeared, but he heard his target rematerialize and crumple to the floor only a stonesthrow away. He turned his damaged ocular toward her. It appeared she had exhausted herself once again.

"That's enough," said a voice in his ear. "End it. And bring her back in."

Zero swiftly crossed toward her and drew a single long needle. She saw him approach and, in desperation, aimed a kick at his kneecap, but he blocked it with the side of his shin.

Then he planted one knee in the small of her back to immoblize her and, with clinical precision, sank the needlepoint into the back of her neck. She writhed briefly and then fell silent.

With no reflection or ceremony, the cybernetic warrior scooped up Ginny's limp form and carried it back to her cell.

[General Gideon Vasher]

"Dr. Zajeda?"

The doctor jotted a few notes on her clipboard and consulted the instruments. "The isotope we injected her with performed brilliantly, Colonel," she said smugly. "Allowed us to track her and monitor her vitals through every jump."

"And do you have enough to find out what makes it all work? Some sort of adapted organ? Something biochemical? Something about her nervous system?"

"Couldn't say until I've had time to analyze the data," Zajeda replied. "I will keep you apprised, as always."

The door of the cell swung open to admit Zero carrying an unconscious Ginny Hayes. Colonel Vasher smiled with grim satisfaction.

"Well done. Lay her in her chair and return to your chamber. We'll be around to repair the damage shortly."

Zero deposited his burden and disappeared again; the lab techs wasted no time in securing Ginny's restraints and fastening the collar around her neck. But there was nothing to fear - she slept as peacefully as if she were an infant in her mother's arms.

As the techs wired her up to the monitors once more, Colonel Vasher stood over her and gently, almost tenderly, brushed a wisp of fiery red hair from her eyes. "Sleep well, Miss Hayes. You've earned it. For now."

The colonel, the doctor, and the lab techs filed out of the cell, leaving it dark and silent.