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The first thing Remy heard as he slowly swam his way back to consciousness was a deep thrumming sound. The sound of a lot of electrical equipment.
He cracked his eyes open cautiously and was relieved to find the room's lights had been dimmed. He turned his head slowly and was confronted with the consistent beeping of a machine whose pulsing green flashes told him it registered his heart beat. Besides that was a machine that was monitoring something else. Remy didn't try to guess what only that the little line spiked and dropped regularly.
A rustling caught his attention and he turned his head in that direction. Sorrel sat scrunched on a chair in the corner of the room. She was sleeping but Remy noted the worn out expression that she wore even whilst unconscious. He felt a pang of pity, and realized that he had been harsh in his treatment of her. He himself had learned that he had little choice when it came to following his father, what made him think that she would have any more freedom.
Remy frowned. Now that was a funny word to think of with regard to his father. Freedom. Why would he feel trapped by his loved ones? He didn't know but he didn't want to give himself a headache by trying to figure it out just now. His head felt strange enough at the moment without any extra encouragement to make it feel worse. He wanted to get up.
He tried to sit up but found he couldn’t raise his chest more than an inch from the bed. There was something invisible restraining him. He tried again feeling a rising sense of dread as he recognized the fact that he wasn’t going anyway.
The frantic movements and the desperate little sounds that escaped him woke Sorrel from her exhausted slumber. She moved quickly to Remy's side and held his arm gently trying to calm and soothe him with her presence.
"Remy, stop. You cannot move yet, not until he turns off the force field. It's for your own protection. You suffered a psychic shock and he didn’t know how you'd react when you woke. Remy please, he just wants to make sure you're okay." Sorrel said urgently.
"That's right," David said from behind her, causing Sorrel to jump guiltily.
David came further into the room and moved over to the machines monitoring Remy.
"Hmmm, reasonable," he murmured to himself and then turned back to his son. "How do you feel?" he asked.
Remy ceased his attempts to move and focused warily on his father. "A li’l strange. My head feels funny."
"Yes it would. I’ve turned off your mutant abilities." David stated matter of factly.
Cold terror clutched at Remy’s innards. "Turned off?" he murmured hesitantly not sure he'd heard right. He cast a quick glance down at himself, he hadn’t got a collar on, and aside from the patches where he was linked to the monitoring machines there didn’t seem to be anything alien on his body.
David's laughter brought his focus back to his father. "Nothing so crude my boy," he said, seeming to have read Remy's thoughts. "More of those fantastic little implants. These ones in your head. It's really quite interesting," David continued oblivious to the sickly pallor that had overcome Remy's face. "Such a small piece of biotechnological equipment placed in the right areas of your brain and I can switch you on and off at a whim. Of course the only switch to this particular device is inside my own cybernetic enhancements and keyed to my thought patterns so no one else will be able to use you against me."
Remy felt his mind become more and more detached the more David told him about the implants and what they could do to him. He felt himself floating in a numbing blackness where there was no pain and no suffering and he could forget about the real world. Just for a while.
Sorrel turned her head away from David, disgusted by his enthusiasm for the destruction of their son. Given the choice he would use and abuse Remy until there was nothing left of there son but a living robot. She had to find help, she had to get Remy away from David. Yet it had to be done cautiously. David had too much control over them with his own enhancements. She would need someone with more power. Someone who could stand up to David. She would have to wait for Nathan to come back.
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The X-Men returned home, triumphant and yet defeated. Their raid on Sinister's base in Boston had been a success. They had soundly defeated the Marauders and Sinister had fled. Yet when they examined the remains of the base they discovered no trace of Remy ever having being there.
It was back to square 1 and they had no idea where they should begin to look next for their missing comrade.
Jean went straight home to the boat house in which she lived with her husband. X-Men Team Leader Cyclops, a.k.a. plain old Scott Summers. She slumped onto the couch. Too exhausted even to wash away the evidence of their days work. She had spent the couple of days on high alert, ever since she had made contact with Remy. Any hint of his presence or something like it and she would be ready to connect to the astral plain and try to track him down from there. And it was beginning to tell on her.
After she had successfully contacted Remy they had decided that they should raid one of Sinister's bases as soon as possible hoping to catch the geneticist unawares. They had, which is probably why they had been so successful, but Jean hadn’t been able to contact Remy since. She was afraid for him, something had ripped him from the astral plain and she felt that whatever it was would not have been pleased at discovering Remy’s little chat with her.
She felt a hand touch her shoulder and smiled wearily up at her husband.
"Jean," Scott began hesitantly. "I think you need to take a break from this. You're going to hurt yourself... and the baby."
Jean sighed. "Scott I know, but this is important too. I feel so helpless. Remy is out there somewhere with two of the most evil men in the world. Worst of all I don't think he remembers us. I think his memories have been blocked to stop him trying to get away. I feel like the longer we leave him there the less chance we have of bringing him back whole."
Scott frowned. Jean's intuition had proved invaluable before, but he found himself hoping that this time she was wrong, because what he had finally admitted to himself was that he didn’t think they could find and rescue Remy. Not without a miracle.
End of part 12