It's Who You Know

Part One of the X Chronicles

by Smoot

Chapter 7

Light filtered in through broken windows into a desolate warehouse and fell upon two men sitting twenty feet away from each other, tightly bound to chairs. One was dressed in a pair of black jeans and a close-fitting tank top, and was doggedly pulling at his chains. The other had his head down, his teeth gritted, and sweat was pouring off his brow.

Quentin continued pulling for a while longer, yanking every which way, but finally sagged backward against the chair, exhausted. He looked up and at the man across from him and wrinkled up his brow. "What are you doing?"

Red eyes peered out at the teenager from the blackness of Remy LeBeau's face, hidden by his long, trailing brown hair. "What do y'mean, what am I doin'?" Remy asked in a haggard voice. "I'm doin' all I can t' get us outta 'ere."

Quentin laid back in complete and total apathy, tired from straining against his bonds. "Can't you just fly us out of here or something?"

"Fly?" Remy asked, cracking a grin despite himself. "An' how, pray tell, would I do that?"

"I dunno, how am I supposed to know what your mutant power is?" Quentin said in return. "First I thought you were a vampire, because of your eyes. Then I said to myself, 'Quentin, no, that's stupid. If he was a vampire, he'd go poof in the morning.' So I ruled that out."

Remy smiled. "And den?"

"I thought maybe you were one of those eye-beam shooting mutants, because it seems like we have a pretty good amount of them. But then I thought not. You're a thief, that much is obvious. So why would you be a thief if you shot people with your eyes? The powers don't add up.

"So what is your power?"

Remy looked at him for a minute, a trickle of sweat rolling down his forehead. "My mutant power is de ability to convert de potential energy in an object to kinetic energy an' release it explos'vly on impact."

Quentin stared at him blankly before saying, "You were a big Chemistry guy in school, weren't you?"

"Non," Remy grinned. "I was more into t'eater and histr'y. Renaissance, t'be exact. Dat was some good stuff."

"Yeah, I remember high school," Quentin said with a grandfatherly hint to his voice. "Yeah, back in the day…"

"Oui…"

They stayed silent for a moment before each one of them started laughing. Remy looked at him a bit more gently than he had before. "I t'ink we need t' get outta here, mon ami."

"You may have something there. So if you can do that energy transformation or conversion or whatever it was, couldn't you do that to the clamps on your wrists?"

"Dat's what I been tryin' to do, but somet'ing just doesn't seem t' be working. It won't take de charge."

"They're metal, right?" Quentin asked.

"Far as I c'n tell," Remy responded. "Dey feel like metal."

"Then you should have no trouble getting them to take a charge," Quentin mused. "The chairs aren't bolted down for some reason. Turn around so I can see the bonds."

Remy maneuvered around in a half circle so Quentin could get a view of the bonds holding his hands and wrists together. In the pale light, the young man had to lean forward and squint, but he was able to see that there were two dimly lit mauve lights on each clamp, and the clamps were connected by a short and thin but strong-looking linking chain.

"You have some odd captors, my friend. Whoever trussed you up is taking no precautions. You've got the whole twenty-five dollar package, complete with the glowing lights and the futuristic chain. Somebody thinks you're pretty damn special."

"What?" Remy asked. "Lights an' chains?" He gritted his teeth, hunched his upper body forward, and started concentrating again.

Quentin's eyes got wide, and a moment later Remy let out a burst of stale air and sucked in a deep breath. "Nothin'. Can't even get a charge on dem."

"Dude, whatever you did got some freaky stuff happening back here," Quentin said aloud.

"What?" Remy asked.

"When you started trying to pass that kidney stone, the lights on your restraints back here started glowing pretty brightly. It didn't change colors, or anything like that, it just glowed like a halogen bulb."

Remy thought about it for a second. "Dis is startin' t' add up," he mused. "Quentin, turn around, I'm goin' t' try somet'in'."

Quentin opened his mouth to protest, thought better of it, and then spun the chair and braced himself.

Remy's eyes functioned perfectly in the dim light. His vision wasn't hindered in the least like Quentin's was, so it was easy for him to determine that Quentin's bonds were nothing like what Quentin described Remy's as. The kid looked just to be chained in the chair, nothing too difficult to overcome, even in the predicament he had been thrust into. "Now, Quentin, I hope y' don' mind a bit o' pain, 'cause if y' do, I really don' care. Just be ready."

With his warning said, Remy went into his Jedi-like concentration stage, his eyes half-closed but focused perfectly, his breathing shallow, and his body seemingly slowing down. He looked at the chains around Quentin's wrists not on a physical level, but a watered-down version of a molecular level, and with that, he energized molecule by molecule, picking up every third or fourth one and letting it charge up to the breaking point. He did that in every link of the chain, concentrating them most in the areas where the chain links touched one another.

After he was satisfied with the levels of energy bouncing around in the steel around his comrade's wrists, he twitched his lip as he let his grip on the charged molecules go. With nothing keeping them below combustion, they ricocheted along the molecular interior of the chain, plowing into charged and normal molecules alike before releasing the pent-up energy explosively.

Remy fell out of his near-trance and back into the physical realm as the chains around Quentin's wrists popped with a small flurry of sparks and tiny explosions and fell to the ground with a clatter. To his credit, Quentin didn't wince or anything of the sort; he merely rubbed his wrists after they were freed.

Quentin gingerly got to his feet and stretched out his leg and arm muscles before walking over to Remy and kneeling behind him. As his fingers raced along the binding clamps on Remy's arms, Quentin asked, "What exactly did you do?"

Remy remembered the complex process he had to go through, all the work on the molecular level of reality, the intricateness of the job, the complexity of charging the particles and keeping them at the same level of power and not letting them waver, and then the perfect timing and reaction speed necessary to release them all at the same time to set off the chain reactions, and then smiled. "Oh, I jus' made de chains blow up."

Quentin looked at him dumbly. "Yeah, that must've been it."

"Look, what I did ain't important. Getting' us outta here, now dat's important. See if y' can get dese t'ings off my hands."

"Um, sure, here goes nothing," Quentin said. He placed one of his feet against one of the clamps on Remy's wrists, the other underneath him as a brace. He wrapped both hands around the other clamp, set himself, and pulled for all that he was worth.

Remy braced himself, pushing forward in the other direction, trying to urge along the process any way he could. Quentin's eyes forced themselves shut as he pulled with every ounce of his strength, and then he heard a loud, sharp "snap".

Remy jolted forward as the pressure behind him suddenly abated. He breathed a sigh of relief and went to stand up -- and took the chair with him before rudely sitting back down. His hands were still sealed together behind the back of the chair. "Did y' not get dem free or what?"

"I tried," Quentin said, rubbing his behind as he got back to his feet. "Nothing happened, save me breaking my ass."

"Dat won't get me outta dis chair," Remy snapped. "Hold on, let me try somet'ing."

He looked over at the ends of the metal chair that Quentin had been sitting in. "Can y' remove on of dose chair legs?"

Quentin walked over, inspected the chair for a few minutes, and then set about unbolting on of the legs. About seven minutes later, he came back over with one of the metal chair legs. It was a bit dented and scratched up, but looked okay otherwise.

"It'll do," Remy said, and then let the rest of the world fall out of focus as he limited his vision only to the metallic rod in front of him. Quentin narrowed his eyes suspiciously, but then his attention was thrown elsewhere when the end of the chair leg sprang to life on him, crackling and glowing a faint pink.

"What are you doing?" he asked hurriedly.

"Just anot'er plan. Hit de bonds wit' dat, but brace y'self. An' I mean dat."

Quentin had learned not to ask questions, so he walked over behind the chair, took a deep breath, raised the leg above his head, and swung it down.

The impact of the rod blew it out of his hand, and the explosion singed his arms and did enough to drive him back a foot or two.

Remy rose to his feet, rubbing his wrists, the damage proving to be enough to free him. "Merci."

"Don't mention it," Quentin said with a theatrical bow. "Just doing what comes naturally to an up and coming hero like myself."

"Sure y' are," Remy said, rolling his eyes. Kneeling beside the remains of the manacles, he said, "Now let's see what dese t'ings are, oui?"

"Sounds like a plan," Quentin said, stooping over next to him.

Remy lifted one of them and turned it over in his hand thoughtfully, mumbling his thoughts aloud incoherently. He ran his finger along the metal making it up, traced circles in the once-illuminated light ports, and then rapped gently on it a few times. He was able to see the circuitry of the contraption where the explosion had ripped it apart. He stretched out two of the wires and looked at them appraisingly. Then he gripped it solidly, furrowed his brow, and the lights on the clamps started brightening again. Remy then released it as the lights went back down.

"Jus' as I t'ought," he said to Quentin. "De t'ings sap my power. Dey don't really counter it, just suck it up an' store it wit'in demselves. Dat's why I couldn't free myself earlier."

"So why was I able to free you?" Quentin asked. "Seeing as I know absolutely nothing about your powers, I mean…"

"Of course," Remy nodded. "Dat was merely de release of all de kinetic energy on impact wit' another object. Didn't matter whether it could store my power or not. Energy is energy, only in different forms. Dis jus' happened to be explosive energy. No counter-reaction for dat in dese small t'ings."

Quentin picked one up. "So these were designed with your specific mutant power in mind."

"I t'ink so," Remy said, picking the other one up and rubbing it thoughtfully. "I don't t'ink dese would've stopped some of de other mutants I know."

"Other mutants?" Quentin asked quickly.

"Well, y' run into a couple sooner or later, y'know. I did live in New York f'r a time," Remy covered.

"Oh, well, that goes without saying," Quentin acknowledged. "But these were created by someone strictly with you in mind? That's a bit suspicious, if you ask me. If you don't ask me, well, it's still suspicious. Would Pitchford know your mutant power?"

"I've used it breakin' into his home, but not noticeably or recklessly. He wouldn't 've been able t' recognize it."

"So someone else knows your power and is working with them…" Quentin mused. "Well, we have about six more days to figure everything out before the transaction takes place."

Remy stopped short. "It just took place. Pitchford handed over de weapons. You were dere."

"But that can't be right," Quentin said. "I was eavesdropping on Pitchford when he met those two main members of the Assassin's Guild. You know, the tall blonde and the scary guy. He said that the shipment of weapons would come at the place that they had already agreed on."

"An' I suppose y' don't know where dat is?" Remy asked.

"Nope. All I heard was them agreeing that you wouldn't be a problem."

Remy rubbed his chin in speculation. "Den dat might mean dat dis was just a ruse, an illusion t' t'row you an' me off."

"Or there are two Pitchfords."

Remy opened his mouth to continue his wondering, and then closed and looked at Quentin in surprise. "What?"

"Well, look at it this way. Pitchford doesn't know your mutant power. Someone else might. I imagine the Assassin's Guild knows it, right?" Remy nodded, and Quentin continued. "So unless the Assassin's Guild told him, which in my mind is pretty unlikely, someone else has a hand in all this."

"I t'ink you have a point dere, but I don't t'ink dat de Assassin's Guild could've told 'im anyt'ing. Dey don't know everyt'ing about my power, at least not enough t' make cuffs like dat t' hold me in place. Dey never had a chance to study me or my power."

"Does anyone know you or your powers well enough to make those?" Quentin asked, pointing to the cuffs lying on the floor.

Remy was quiet for a minute. "I can t'ink of only one person dat might've been able t' do dat, an' we might as well pack up an' leave if he did."

"Powerful guy?"

"Y' don' know de half of it, mon ami," Remy said coldly.