Chapter 7 - continued
When Benoit woke up to the bright sunlight streaming in the room, he peaked through the door across the hallway. The door was still closed, the light still on and shining through beneath. He understood; being in a strange place, she was unlikely to leave her room unless she knew he was awake. He stumbled to the closet and threw some house clothes on - certainly not something he would be seen in outside, but enough to cover himself so she would come out for breakfast. Halfway into his shirt, his mind jolted. Bright day in the window. The light on in her room. And an insomniac who would have seen that bright sun outside hours ago, and turned off the light if she thought to. It was a fluke, surely, but he hastened to finish getting dressed and almost jumped to knock on her door, not even bothering to check his sleep-hair in the mirror.
After there was no answer at the second knock, Benoit began to panic.
“Zoe?” he asked too loudly through the door. There was no response.
“Zoe?” he could keep this up or admit what he already knew. He twisted the door knob and found it locked from inside - again, a result he instinctively knew and which hardly surprised him - and began fumbling above the door frame for a small key. His hands found it, covered in dust and nonuse, and he shoved it into the tiny keyhole, twisting furiously until the door unlocked. He threw open the door, banging it with more force then he knew he had against the far wall, before he realized he had been holding his breath. It came out as one gasp for air as he saw the empty room before him, and the open window.
In a last ditch effort, he scrambled over Zoe’s bags and clothes and the comforter thrown on the ground to see out of the window. The fire escape blocked his view, but there was no sign anything or anyone had come or gone. He scanned for bodies six stories below in the alleyway behind the building without success. She could have disappeared anytime during the night - even before he arrived home.
The clink of metal sounded behind him, a familiar sound of someone on the small spiral staircase leading downstairs. Without moving his head, he threw his eyes to the space in the doorway where the stairs could be seen. At the very bottom of his vision, a small tuft of brown hair could be seen. Men’s hair, hesitating, and believing itself to be out of sight.
Almost as soon as it began to rise, Benoit threw his legs out of the window, his bare feet smacking against the steel fire escape landing. He crouched is entire body against the window, his mind racing. Yelling came from inside, in English. “Outside! The fire escape!” And now the noises were much more obvious. If they had guns, running down six flights of narrow stairs was not an option, and even if he made it down to the street, he couldn’t run for ever. What else could he do?
One of the intruders answered his question by throwing his foot out the window, apparently not seeing Benoit flush against the wall just underneath. Without thinking, Benoit grabbed the boot and pulled as hard as he could. The momentum carried the attacker straight to and off the other side of the narrow platform, screaming until his body hit the ground. Benoit shuddered and almost emptied his stomach over the railing right there, but the need to stay alive somehow kept him going. He checked inside to see if anyone was behind the now dead brown haired man, and seeing no one, ducked back into his apartment. He froze in Camille’s room, listening for any noises.
“The girl is in the van, sir, but there’s no sign of this other mutant.”
“We didn’t come for him, and we have her. Let him go. Kill her. Burn the building.” There was more movement, the door opened and slammed shut.
Benoit needed to do thirty things in the space of ten seconds. He ran back into his bedroom, not caring about the noise he made this time, and clawed at the nightstand for his cell phone. He forced out Fury’s number before holding it between his shoulder and ear, and began digging through his wardrobe for the gun Fury had given him on the second week of work - “just in case.” Benoit had unloaded it, kept no ammunition in the house, and had hidden the gun such that now even he could not find it. All to keep Camille safe, and now he was going to die because of it. I’m going to die even if I found a loaded fucking machine gun, and even if I knew how to use it.
“I’m already on it,” Fury’s voice came through the cell phone. “Stay in the apartment, wait for my signal.”
Benoit didn’t ask how Fury already knew he was in trouble, or how much he knew. Fury always had his ways. “They’re going to torch the building, I need to get out of here.”
“Now is not the time to argue, Benny.” The cell phone clicked. That’s that.
Benoit ran back over to the window and scanned outside for Fury, or Zoe, or a van, or anything. A man was just starting to climb up the fire escape - one of his attackers, or one of Fury’s men, Benoit had no way of knowing. Nor was he given a chance to. Nearly as soon as the man reached the second story landing, a small snnnp came from his left, and the man collapsed in a heap, blood spilling everywhere. Whatever was going on out there, it was no longer an exit. His window was a free fall six stories below, and his stomach retched again at the sight of what that had done just moments earlier. And the front door would undoubtedly bring him face to face with the bad guys, whoever they were.
His cell phone rang. “Was that your man?”
“They have snipers surrounding your building.” That meant yes, but Fury would never admit to losing a man for failure to plan. “I need you to stay away from the windows for right now.”
A roar exploded outside, as though a building had just come down. Smoke began pouring through the open window in thick clouds. Benoit slammed the window closed and dropped to the ground, grabbing the blanket in case he needed to put out a fire. He dragged it into the hallway on his hands and knees, the cell phone crooked in his neck wobbling from the effort.
“Fury? Fury! What the fuck is going on out there?” He chucked the blanket the rest of the way and sat with his back against the wall, positioning himself to see the stairwell and both bedrooms at once. With a hand finally free, he yanked the phone away. The call had been dropped. The exits were blocked, and the cavalry had been killed. His thumb instinctively dialed the number, his mind finally and perhaps thankfully emptied of thought.
“Bonjour, Benoit.”
“Bonjour, Babette. I need you to do something for me. Do you have pen and paper?” His stomach heaved with effort.
“Oui?”
“There is an account under my name at the Crédit Lyonnais with just over a million Euros. The account number is 015430. The passnumber is 52407. I need you to empty the account and take Camille as far as you can go.”
“Comment?”
“Babette please do this for me. Make sure she is safe, the money should be plenty for you two. I don’t have much time. Just please make sure she is safe.”
There was a brief pause, then a sigh. “015430, 52407, the Crédit Lyonnais. How…will you ever be in contact again?”
He let his silence be the answer. “Thank you, Babette.”
“Bonne chance à vous, Benoit.”
He clicked the cell phone shut, and waited.
***
Every time Pyro came to Paris, he hated the place. There was a film of dirt in the air, the people were miserable and treated him as though he lacked basic social skills, and every mission in this fucked up city had met with failure. Today was shaping up to be no exception.
A new team had pulled up to the building, carrying none other than Nick Fury himself, and Pyro had spotted no fewer than four snipers on rooftops nearby. Friends of Humanity troops had stormed the building earlier, and were now dragging a girl out kicking and screaming. Not any girl, of course. The very one that Pyro was to capture or kill. Whether the snipers were Fury’s men or part of the Friends remained to be seen, but a convergence of this many players in one spot made Pyro antsy.
He fished his phone out and called Mystique, comfortably away from the cataclysm, and related the news.
“Well fuck Pyro, this is what happens when you can’t do one simple task.”
“Fuck off Mystique. Where do we go from here?” Despite everything, Magneto had still been a better boss. Sure, Pyro was the one who had him killed, but that didn’t keep him from missing the old guy. That had been an adventure, for sure, but the versions he had told to so many people - Mystique and Sin-je just the first two that came to mind - kept changing and twisting he wasn’t even sure he knew the truth of the matter anymore.
Mystique still hadn’t answered. “Hello? Do you want me to go in or leave?”
“Shut up I’m thinking.” Mystique was becoming more and more annoying to put up with the longer Destiny was gone. Like all dykes, she just need to be fucking scissored and she’d calm down.
“Ok, new plan for you. Listen this time, and so help me if you screw this up Pyro. Can you see Fury’s car from here?”
There had been many times in Pyro’s life that he had to walk the line between obedient henchman and free agent. Often times, giving the appearance of one allowed him to more easily be the other. So it came naturally to Pyro, as Mystique began to spin her web from the shadows, to spin his own ways to work it to his advantage.
***
Famine stood on a rooftop removed the scene unfolding in front of her, feeling compelled to rush in and do…something. Although she didn’t know what, or why. It wasn’t Yohn. The first she had learned he was in Paris, her reaction had been a combination of indifference and disdain. Yohn marched to his own drum, and so long as that didn’t parade didn’t march in front of her or the Lord Apocalypse, he was free to do as he wanted. It wasn’t the girl either - her instructions were clearly to observe unless danger was imminent, and while these humans calling themselves the Friends of Humanity had thrown the girl into a van, she hadn’t seen any indication that she was in danger of life or limb. But something in her ached to be a part of the action.
“We’re here as guardians for now, Rubes,” Death said behind her, undoubtedly picking up on her tension. “Don’t do anything stupid.” She knew that to be a nod toward Yohn.
“I’m done with him,” she said, sitting back down cross-legged and pulling the binoculars up to her eyes. She could see inside the room where everything was happening, where a mutant named Benoit Delatour was looking out a window. A silenced snipe rang out and her eyes searched frantically in the binoculars for the source, or victim. She saw the body at the foot of the fire escape.
“We have another player,” she remarked, as though discussing the price of produce at the store. Her vision brought her to an unmarked black SUV, and in the passenger seat, a colored man with an eye-patch. On both his and the driver’s vests, a word was written. “Interpol.”
Death seemed unconcerned. “Good for Interpol. So long as they don’t target the girl, they aren’t our problem.”
Not our problem seemed to be the mantra of the past few months. Famine had been sent from Toronto to London to Paris and back again, with stops in New York, the island of Genosha, Israel, and a dozen other locales just to mix it up. Always she traveled alone but met with another horseman there. Almost always she was observing someone Apocalypse had his eyes on - for what she had no idea. She could remember a time her curiosity would have screamed for not knowing, but now, she trusted the plan and went along with it. Oh but it was tiring. She had been sent to keep an eye on this girl Zoe on three separate occasions, twice in Paris. Apparently Zoe had been attacked by none other than Yohn himself, but Death and Pestilence had intervened without being seen. She trusted, but while she wasn’t aggravated per se, she was certainly fatigued.
Suddenly an explosion burst through the air, and Famine was on her hands and knees peering over the side of the now-rocking building. The black SUV was a charred heap, and the man with the eye patch was standing just to the side of it staring in amazement, with a radio up to his mouth.
The fire burning around the car raged wildly, but Famine could see that it was slowly being pulled upwards, as though in an upside down funnel. And just like that, the fire was contained. She was hardly surprised to look over at Yohn - who still hadn’t even seen her there - with a grenade launcher as long as she was tall propped against a chimney, working his voodoo. He was playing a game here, alright, but so long as he didn’t interfere…
It seemed the Friends of Humanity recognized that they were far from the only players here today. The van with Zoe took off, and Famine rose to her feet.
“Looks like we’re on the move,” Death said, putting out a cigar on the rooftop. She resisted the urge to push her boot into his chest and force him back down. These past weeks of observation with Death and War particularly had been torment on her libido. Instead, she grabbed the small sack she carried with her and began to climb down the side of the building.