The X-Project

My name is Remy Étienne LeBeau. It's not my real name. I don't know my real name, since no one has called be by it since I was a baby. Until the age of twelve, I lived in the city of New Orleans. It was then my mutant powers manifested, and I was forcably inducted into a government program called LOSTBOYS. That was 1983. It gets even more complicated.

I was operated on to modify my powers. Some of you have seen the scars. I was conditioned to serve as a high level covert operative for representatives of the United States intelligence agencies. The official term is roving detached operational asset. Everyone else called us 'assassins'.

Pete Wisdom was right when he warned you not to come near me. Gambit, as I came to be known, was especially good at what he did. I'm not going to go into details, but they were brutal and ugly years. I was about as evil as a human being gets, and that's all you need to know.

In early 2002, investigators from the Congressional Intelligence oversight committee finally picked up on rumours of LOSTBOYS. In order to protect themselves, the retiring DO of the CIA decided to bring in the remaining agents of the program under the pretense of a meeting. There they performed a total psychic lobotomy on us, burying our memories and personalities behind layers of mental scar tissue. Just incase they ever needed us again, they implanted a code phrase that would immediately reverse the effects; in essence, reactivating us.

Then they dumped us on the streets to die.

When the professor first found me in January, it was not simply a lucky sweep with the Cerebro. All of us had a nano-passive system in our blood that masked the X gene, making us appear like normal humans. Members of the CIA, deciding this school had the potential to be major risk to national security, disabled the masking system in my blood, so my mutant signature would become quickly detected, assuming the Professor would find me and take me into the school. Since I knew nothing of who I was past twelve or earlier than a year prior, all the telepathic scans in the world would not show an agent.

Their plan was that if this school was ever considered a legitimate threat, they would reverse the psychic surgery, and Gambit would return. Neutralizing the threat would be his primary objective. That involves killing everyone here, in as painful a way that could be planned.

Whether it's my own somewhat difficult psychic signature or just poor work, the memories of who I was started seeping back while I was here in the winter. Some of you may have noticed me saying or doing things that I shouldn't have been able to do, like killing highly trained assault commandos with my bare hands.

That was Gambit coming back. As far as I can tell, that incident which involved the portal to Hell caused the largest crack. By then, memories of dead people, blood soaked rooms, all the worst sins, started to appear day and night. More skills I was using unconsciously that I had no way of acquiring. I assumed that it was this place, trying to implant these images in my head to made me some kind of killer. Unfortunately, the killer all the time was already me.

So, I ran. Six months, drunk or high as long as I could, stealing to try and get back there when I wasn't. And the images got worse. When the light is too bright, you can shut your eyes. When the screams are too loud, you can plug your ears. But when its your brain shoving horrors behind your eyelids, there's only one way to turn it off.

Which landed me back here with a head wound and a paranoid streak a mile long. I've said and done things here without knowing it, and those are things I can't take back. Whatever the case, a week ago, those members of the CIA who had planned this tried to activate me.

For whatever reason, it didn't work right. Instead of putting my old psyche back in charge, I got all his memories back. So I ran again. Last night, I came to see the Professor, to see if I really was in charge, or if the assassin was still lying in wait. If he was, I had no intention of him or I surviving the next 24 hours.

There is no more Gambit. Just me and the memories that I am the only Witness to. The Professor convinced me to stay, to help. There is one thing we differ on. I don't believe these things can ever be atoned for.

I know there are things that I've said and done to give plenty of cause to hate me. I won't deny that. All I can say is that the man I was, and even the person you knew, doesn't exist any more. The person you hate is a ghost, as dead and gone as a corpse. You can believe that or not.