Blueshift

Blueshift Chapter Thirty Eight (NC-17)
Disclaimers Apply

A/N Goddess Foxfeather, Queen of Mad Plotbunnies, BUSIEST WOMAN ALIVE ™, Prophetic Muse, Hamster Witch and Uberbeta… *twitchy * InterNutter, TC, Maxwell Pink and Dracena are loverly and wondermous for archiving/hosting. :) ProPhile: *GLOMP * Morgan: *hugs * Readers/Reviewers: Thank you lots and lots and lots and lots for reading/reviewing! :) The ducks appreciate it, too. ;)


Kitty’s contacts were bothering her and she highly suspected she needed a shower, people were just being too polite to tell her. She closed her eyes for a moment and pressed her forehead against the cool metal of the refrigerator. She had missed dinner and a late evening snack just did not appeal to her. She had hours of work ahead of her in Cerebro and the computer lab but she just needed a break. The mansion was silent, people hiding out in their rooms or in the study, Warren’s arrival causing a flurry of interest earlier but now nearly forgotten. With a resigned sigh, Kitty pushed herself away from the cool metal and turned to trudge back to her task. A soft shuffling noise ahead of her in the dim rec room made her pause. “Kurt?” Silence, then the shuffle again. She sighed. “Listen, baby, I’d normally be all about the teasing and all, but tonight I just have too much to do.”
“Who are you talking to, Liebes?” Kurt asked, rounding the corner from the hall as the shuffling sounded again to Kitty’s right.
She blinked and stared at him. He was nearly invisible in the room except for his eyes and the faint outline of his shoulders and hands as he held an armload of textbooks. “Uh…myself, it seems…” She frowned and turned full circle, trying to peer into the darkness. “Or a rat.”
“Rats…ugh…” He shuddered theatrically. “I love them as pets but not free range.” He set the books down on the coffee table and crossed to her, taking her into his arms and brushing a kiss across her temple. “What’re you doing? I’ve been looking for you for over an hour.”
“I’m still working on that stuff for the Professor,” she murmured, her ears straining for the noise again. “I’ve got about three more hours before I can safely say I’ve done everything.” She pressed close and kisses his chin quickly. “What’re you up to?”
“Ah…studying,” he admitted. “I have a feeling they’re going to be test-happy next week in order to keep the questioning of our guests down.” He tugged her pony tail gently and glanced around as if to make sure they were alone. “Want to take a break, hmmm? Half an hour? Maybe two hours?”
She laughed softly. “Don’t tempt me,” she scolded gently. “I have a lot to do but afterwards, how about I come see you?”
Kurt bit his tongue on a ribald comment and smiled. “You shouldn’t have to work while you’re on break,” he opined. “You should be relaxing.”
“Well,” she shrugged, pulling away reluctantly, “I’m part of this household and I can’t just leave you guys hanging when I can help, you know?” She shrugged again and pressed her hand against his chest, feeling his heartbeat through skin and bone and clothing, feeling the radiating warmth rising from his skin. “Three hours, sweetie.”
He sighed and nodded, brushing hair from her eyes. “I’ll time you.”
She laughed and moved past him, crossing through the dark rec room and into the more well-lit hallway. The shuffling sound did not come again but she felt distinctly watched. She was sure she felt breath on her skin as she paused at the head of the stairs leading down to Cerebro, sure she felt someone’s fingers brush across her pony tail. Shivering hard, she nearly fell down the stairs in her haste to get to the protected room and shut the metal door behind her. She did not let herself look behind her and feed her own paranoia as she strode purposefully to the console and sat down in the borrowed chair. She had already been through reams of information from the last two days alone. Today’s read outs, she noted, seemed double that amount, if not triple. “Geez,” she muttered, mainly to break the lonely silence of her fear, “looks like all Hell broke loose today, mutant-wise.” She started tapping the coding into the program running on her lap top, glancing at both screens to make sure the information was correctly transferred. She had only been at it for a few minutes when she felt a chill descend over her, making her breath fog briefly before she grew warm, almost too warm to be comfortable. She had the forethought to save the information before turning slowly to look behind her. No one was there that she could see. “Look,” she said flatly, trying to hide the fear in her voice, “this isn’t funny. I don’t care what the older kids told you, I don’t like being pranked. Get yourself back to your room and leave me alone and we can pretend this never happened.” Silence stretched for several moments. Kitty made a small noise of annoyance and pointedly returned to her work.
“Ekaterine?”
She froze. No one called her that name here. No one called her that name any more, period.
“Ekaterine….”
She turned again, standing as she did so, and felt the blood drain from her face as she faced the intruder. A woman about her height, wearing a white toga hemmed in the typical Greek key pattern, her hair twisted into complicated knots atop her head and bound in silver ribbons, smiled faintly back at her. “Oooooh, no…”
“Shiva told me I could find you here. He said just look for your lifeforce but it was difficult to separate from this… machine.”
Kitty shook her head frantically. “No, no, no, no! No!”
The woman sighed. “Are you always this difficult? I understand that you have had some issue with our kind in the past but I assure you, my presence here is purely…academic. There is something here we want to study, to understand and you are the best way to access it.”
Kitty closed her eyes and counted to ten. When she opened them, the woman was still there. “Fuck.”
“How…Saxon…of you.” She twitched her toga into a more comfortable arrangement and smiled again. “I am Minerva. Mostly harmless but very short on time. Come, show me the way.”
“That does it,” Kitty murmured, sinking back into her seat. “I am so never coming home on breaks again.”