True Believers: Part Twenty-Six
"You're very good at this," Melinda said to Kitty as they walked across a virtual landscape of circuitry and cables, dotted with towers of glowing crystal between which energy danced like witchfire. The inside of the station's main computer--or a representation of it, rather.
Kitty smiled. "VR's not exactly new to me," she pointed out. "I have to admit, we usually use it for training simulations and things like that, not walking around inside our systems." She had to admit, this VR technology was as sophisticated as anything the Shi'ar had given the X-Men. It felt entirely real, even though she knew her real body was sitting in a chair beside Melinda in the command center. Wonder what the experience is like in a direct neural link, like Melinda's? Not that she was going to ask them to stick one of those implants in her head or anything like that--she was just curious.
"Well, it's a useful diagnostic tool," Melinda said with a grin as she stopped in front of one of the crystal outcroppings. "Here we are--take a look, Kitty."
Kitty leaned forward, a soft 'ah' escaping her as she saw the crack, deep within the crystal. "I see. So that's what's causing your surveillance systems to fade in and out. What do we do?"
Melinda was examining the crack carefully. "It's not too bad," she said, and laid a hand flat against the crystal. Kitty blinked as her hand started to glow gold, and Melinda grinned at her again. "I'm in a full link, remember? And the crystal components are self-repairing--once they've been 'encouraged' a little." She withdrew her hand, and Kitty saw that the crack was gone. "There," Melinda said with satisfaction.
"Neat trick."
"You're such a show-off, Melinda," came an amused voice from behind them. Kitty turned to see Rebecca standing there, appearing every bit as human as they were. Rebecca gave her a friendly smile. "Didn't mean to sneak up on you."
Melinda made a face. "Don't be silly, Becca, I was just giving Kitty the grand tour."
"I see." Rebecca looked around measuringly. "There's a few more spots that need looking after," she said.
"I know, I know, I'll get to them--" Melinda hesitated, and then chuckled. "Or was that Rebecca-ese for 'make yourself scarce'?" Rebecca beamed at her, and Melinda shook her head, still laughing. "Whatever--Kitty, I gave you the phrase that breaks your link, right?"
"Right," Kitty said.
"Good. If I'm not back by the time you two are finished your little chat, feel free to use it." Melinda turned, tossing off a wave as she headed away. "Have fun, you two."
Kitty watched her go for a moment, and then turned back to Rebecca. "Our little chat?" she asked quietly, a little amused.
Still smiling, Rebecca closed her eyes for a moment. A shape vaguely resembling a half-circle bench rose up out of the circuitry. Kitty blinked, but then sat down. Rebecca did the same, looking out over the eerie landscape for a moment, as if to gather her composure, before she turned to Kitty.
"I just wanted to tell you, while it was just the two of us, that friends were all Pete and I ever were. There wasn't anything else--and even if there had been, I'm dead, so that would put an end to it, right?"
Kitty blinked, a little distressed by how anxious Rebecca seemed. "You don't owe me any explanations," she said tentatively. That didn't mean she didn't appreciate them, of course--it was nice to have SOMEONE giving it to her straight. Being cryptic seemed to be an epidemic around here.
"I know, I just didn't want there to be anything--unclear about any of this." Rebecca finally smiled again. "He's so happy with you," she said softly. "I've never seen him like this, and I'm so glad for him--for both of you. I just don't want to make you at all uncomfortable--"
Kitty reached out and took Rebecca's hand, squeezing it firmly. "Don't worry," she said insistently, smiling. "I'm not the jealous type--well, okay, maybe I am, a little, but only when I have good reason." She chuckled, and Rebecca seemed to relax a bit. "I can see you were--are very special to Pete--"
"It's okay to speak of me in the past tense, you know," Rebecca said with a sudden, michievous humor. "I am technically a ghost."
"Ghost or not, you seem pretty real to me," Kitty said firmly. "I know how few real friends Pete has. You're obviously one of them, and I'd like to get to know you a little better." She gave Rebecca a bemused smile. "You can help me--absorb all this."
"I gather you're not talking just about being inside a computer," Rebecca said with a little sigh, shaking her head.
"Right. I mean the station--the network, all of it."
"He really kept it from you, then?" Kitty nodded, and Rebecca rolled her eyes. "Stubborn man. I wonder why--" She sighed again. "Maybe he was trying to forget. He really has had very little to do with us in the last few years. Sort of following Nathan's example, you might say."
"Cable's example?"
"Yes." Rebecca hesitated. "I really don't know how much I can--or should tell you--"
"More secrets?"
"I just don't want to go ripping open old wounds. Not while they all have to work together for the time being, I mean." Rebecca's gaze was so sincere, so troubled, that Kitty found herself nodding.
"Makes sense," she said softly. "Well, tell me what you can, then."
"All right." Rebecca paused for a moment, as if to gather her thoughts. "It happened about a year before Nathan went off and formed X-Force. The Record was showing a potential nexus that Carmen and Blaquesmith were really eager to see happen, but it was--one of the really bad ones." For a moment, there was such a sick look in Rebecca's eyes that Kitty squeezed her hand again, reassuringly. "They wanted Nathan to take a team and see to it. He told them no." Rebecca shivered, and continued in a very small voice. "So they went ahead and set things up so that he had no choice but to do it."
"How?"
"I--I can't tell you, Kitty. But what they did--" Rebecca blinked. "Nicholas almost left the network over it. Kevin--one of the other station chiefs, Melinda's brother--nearly KILLED Carmen because of it. We even nearly had a schism in the network--all of the North American station chiefs were ready to split--" Rebeccashook her head. "But Carmen and Blaquesmith did manage to force Nathan into doing what they wanted him to do. Afterwards, he just--left. This is the first time he's been back to the London station since then." Rebecca gave her a faintly embarrassed smile. "Pete didn't--um, go as quietly."
"I'm not surprised," Kitty murmured. "But yet he went running off to find Cable when Dunworthy asked him?"
"Well, Nicholas managed to convince him to--not patch things up, but be available in case we needed him. Just in case, say, the network ran into something that Nathan absolutely had to be involved in." Rebecca shrugged uneasily. "Apparently Nathan still stayed in touch with Kevin and some of the North American stations, from time to time. But so much comes from here--this is where we decide what alterations to make to the timestream. The other stations get all their orders straight from here."
"So Pete got drafted as envoy, huh?" *Bet he must have dug in his heels over that, at first--*
"Right. And not just to Nathan, either, but to some of the stations that are STILL not happy with Dunworthy over all of this. Nicholas took care of all of that for a while, but he's not been well for the last couple of years. He finally got Pete to agree to the occasional--errand, just before things started to go really bad with Black Air."
Kitty couldn't help shaking her head. "How do you all survive as one group, then, if half of you can't trust your leader?" she asked in mild exasperation. From what she'd seen of Dunworthy so far, the older woman REALLY didn't strike her as a particularly good leader in the first place.
"You don't get it, do you?" Rebecca asked with a strangely wistful smile. "We're not like the X-Men, Kitty. We're not a family. It's not that we don't care about each other--well, some of us do, and some of us don't. But there's always been a lot of--unhappiness, in the network. The things we have to do, the lives we lead--you don't know this, but no one INSIDE the network really exists, from a legal standpoint. Operatives'll use false identities on missions, but real names, every bit of personal information is erased when you join up."
"Like the X-Men did a while back," Kitty said thoughtfully.
Rebecca nodded. "You're not allowed to get--involved with anyone outside the network," she said. "I think sometimes Dunworthy doesn't even approve of operatives falling in love with each other, like Eddie and Gwen, or Kevin and his second-in-command, Angharad." Rebecca suddenly grinned. "She nearly had a fit when Pete stayed on Muir Island with you, even though he's not really part of the network." Kitty raised an eyebrow, and Rebecca giggled. "He told her to--well, you've been with him for a while now, I think you can probably imagine what he told her."
Kitty smiled. "Yeah, I think I can fill in the blank, Rebecca." She sobered almost immediately. "It doesn't sound like a very pleasant life."
"No. People decide to do it because they think it's important. I'm sure you can relate to that--" Kitty nodded, and Rebecca continued, her voice turning a little grim. "But you never feel like you're making any progress. Or that you're being--productive. It's hard to feel good about tiny mathematical variations in the timestream, especially when the things you have to do to bring those variations about are so distasteful, most of the time--"
"Why is that?" Kitty asked. "I mean, to me, I'd think that for every person that you'd--kill, there'd be one you'd have to help live, right?"
"There is a sort of balance," Rebecca said quietly, her eyes gone distant. "But there's always a cost, always a choice to make." She gave Kitty a sad smile. "Even the 'good' things we do are rarely that pleasant, in the end."
"I can understand that," Kitty said softly. It did sound familiar. True, the X-teams fought different battles, for a different cause, but the frustration over lack of progress sounded all too familiar. And they were isolated, if not as much, and not precisely by choice. So what WAS the difference then? We're not a family, Rebecca had said.
Was that it?
"I guess you probably can," Rebecca said with a smile. She looked like she was about to say something more, but suddenly turned transparent, her form getting a little blurry.
"Rebecca?" Kitty asked with a frown. "Are you all right?"
"BRZZPT--fine, Kitty." Rebecca's shape solidified again, and she gave Kitty an apologetic smile. "Sorry about that. Found some more damage I should probably go check on. Why don't you pull yourself out? This might take me a while."
"Sure," Kitty said. "Rebecca--thanks. For telling me all of this."
Rebecca grinned as they both stood up. "You just wait, I've got LOTS of stories about Pete you'd like to hear."
"I'll take you up on that," Kitty chuckled, watching their 'bench' sink back into the crowd. "Okay--the rats are in the corn."
The virtual landscape vanished around her in the blink of an eye, and Kitty found herself back in the chair, her eyes a little blurry for a moment as she stared at the console in front of her. She lifted off the delicate headset and stretched, not surprised to feel how stiff she was.
Melinda, sitting in the chair beside her, her eyes closed and thin wires trailing from her implant to the console, was smiling, humming to herself. Kitty raised an eyebrow and then chuckled, turning away and leaving her to her work.
Speaking of Pete, I wonder where he got to--?
***
Striding along a corridor on the first level of living quarters, Pete Wisdom stopped in his tracks as he came upon a dead end--of sorts--that shouldn't have been there. Not in the middle of a hall whose layout he knew as well as the back of his hand.
It wasn't precisely a dead end, but he sure as bloody hell wasn't going to walk right through it. Pete took a cautious step closer, studying it. It was as if the air had thickened, blurred into a shimmering mass that barred him from going any further.
And instead of the other side of the hallway, he saw three corridors, all identical. All the same hallway, he realized. Just three different images of it. Like a reflection in a triple mirror--
"What the bloody hell?" he whispered, wondering if this was a malfunction of some new defensive system Mel had cooked up, or something. There were all kinds of internal security devices within the stations--all designed to keep possible intruders from penetrating to the command center. This had to be something like that. He wasn't up on Melinda's latest modifications. That was it.
That--had to be it, right? Problem was, he couldn't figure out what it was supposed to do. Some sort of forcefield, maybe?
He started to turn, intending to backtrack to the nearest companel and tell Melinda, in the command center, about--whatever it was, when a flutter of white at the end of one of the halls caught his eye. Pete felt the color drain from his face.
No. You're dreaming with your eyes open, you bloody git.
Rebecca was walking down the hall towards him in a white nightgown, yawning. Not Rebecca-as-hologram, but Rebecca as she had been, slight and pretty and unmistakably human. Unmistakably alive. His surrogate 'little sister' as she had been, before the bio-attack.
No--I've got to be seeing things, here!
She didn't even see him. She turned at a door farther up the hall--her old room, Pete thought with a pang--and went in without a backward glance.
He stood there for a long, long moment afterwards, trying vainly to figure out what he'd just seen, blinking rapidly. Becca-- He was almost glad, for a moment, that Jamie was still 'undercover' at Apocalypse's base. The kid still hadn't gotten it through his head that his sister's death hadn't been his fault, and Pete couldn't even imagine what his reaction would have been, seeing this.
He eyed the distortion in the air more warily, trying to focus on the here-and-now, not regrets that didn't do a bloody ounce of good anyway. Whatever this was, exactly, he already knew it wasn't good. Bloody hell, if we've got free-floating temporal anomalies hanging about, we're in it deep--
In the hallway in the middle, another door slid open, and Pete watched as Josephine and Melinda whisked an anti-grav stretcher into the hallway. Nicholas was lying on it, in obvious pain. Pete shook his head slowly, realizing what he was seeing. Five years ago--when Nicholas broke his hip. Has to be. They headed towards the elevator at the end of the hall, not even glancing in his direction.
Movement in the third reflection caught his eye. He whirled, and watched in shock as Jonas, covered in blood, emerged from the emergency access and promptly collapsed on the floor, unmoving. Almost involuntarily, he took a step forward--and then flinched, instinctively hitting the ground as a terrible explosion rocked the third corridor, a ball of flame hurtling towards him.
It hit the 'barrier', and a flash of green temporal energy blinded Pete for a moment. When his vision cleared, he look up, warily. Still alive--that's something.
And the corridor was back to normal. Shaking slightly, he pulled himself back to his feet, trying to rationalize what had just happened. Some sort of bloody anomaly, that's for sure--
He took a deep breath, fighting for composure. Settle down, Wisdom. You've seen some pretty crazy things in the years you've been hanging around with this lot-- True, this was one of the strangest. He scowled, straightening his coat with a few impatient jerks on the fabric. What was REALLY bothering him, even more than seeing Rebecca, was that third scene, with Jonas and the explosion. He might not be an expert in temporal theory like most of the people around here, but he'd been around, off and on, for almost ten years, and had kept himself up on pretty much everything that had happened when he wasn't. Especially when it concerned people who he had a passing concern for, like Jonas.
And, as far as he knew, that last scene hadn't happened.
Yet.
Like I don't have bloody well enough to deal with, Pete thought as he continued down the hall, instinctively flinching as he passed the spot where the distortion had been. I don't soddin' well WANT to see the future-- He reached the door he'd been heading towards in the first place, hesitating for a moment once he reached it.
He needed to tell someone about this. All things considered, he'd prefer that person NOT be Dunworthy. Nate's got enough on his mind, his conscience argued with him. You could just tell Nicholas--
But he was here, now. Might as well see if Nate was in any kind of a mood for discussing What It Meant. At least it might keep him from twigging to the fact that the real reason Pete was here was to check on him. His original excuse had been pretty lame, after all--might as well make good use of this one!
Pete pressed the companel beside the door. "Nate? You in there, old man?" There was no answer, and Pete frowned. He bloody well knew Nate WAS in there--he'd asked the computer before coming down here. "Nate? Come on, answer me--" With a scowl, he tapped in the override, and the door slid open.
Inside, the lights were dimmed almost to nothing. These quarters were the ones permanently set aside for Cable. He hadn't used them for years, and even when he'd been here fairly regularly, the place had never taken on any of his personality. Never was home for him, that's for bloody sure--
Cable was sprawled on his stomach on the couch, apparently sound asleep. Or passed out--either way, he looked dead to the world. Pete blinked at him, and then sat down in a nearby chair with a sigh.
"You had to go and do something sensible right when I needed to talk to you, didn't you, you stupid git," he muttered, wondering with a flicker of black amusement if the rest of them could possibly manage to sneak away and leave Cable here while they went on the mission. Nah, doubt our bloody luck stretches THAT far--
Pete pondered his options. Wake him up? No. Nate needed the rest, and besides, Pete had no intention of getting himself shot, or worse, by startling him. Cable's reflexes were on a hairtrigger at the best of times, and testing them now would be idiotic.
But as he sat there, trying to decide what he was going to do--who he was going to tell about what he'd seen out in the hall, since Nate was busy playing Sleeping Beauty--he realized that Cable wasn't sleeping all that soundly, after all. Pete leaned forward, frowning. Cable was--twitching in his sleep, muscles clenching and relaxing as if he was trying to toss and turn but was too exhausted to quite manage it.
"Nate?" Pete called softly. A muffled groan came from the couch, and Pete swore, hitting the floor as a telekinetically propelled chair came flying through the air from the other side of the room, right at him. "Bloody hell!" The chair smashed against the wall, and Cable sat up, blinking dazedly at him.
"Pete? What the flonq are you--" He trailed off, wincing, his eyes going out of focus. Swinging his feet back to the floor, he sank his head into his hands. "What do you want?" he asked in an exhausted voice.
"No 'I'm sorry for trying to brain you with the furniture, Wisdom'?" Pete growled, getting up and going back to his chair. "Oh, that's right. No apologies."
"No regrets," Cable said quietly, and Pete frowned.
"I swear, you get off on being oblique, don't you?" His eyes narrowed at the drained, numb look on Cable's face. "Having a nightmare, or something?"
"Or something," Cable said, his mouth quirking in a humorless smile. "Now, what did you want? Besides to check up on me?"
Pete started to deny it, and then shook his head. Nate was probably hearing everything he thought, anyway. Briefly, he filled him in on what he'd seen in the hallway. Cable listened, the dazed weariness sharpening into something bleaker.
"The damage must be spreading," he said hoarsely, rubbing his temples. "What you saw--probably a breach in the continuum. Other times reflecting back onto this one--seeping through." He swallowed. "Not good, in any case."
"And the third hallway? Nate, unless there was some kind of explosion here before I ever hooked up with you lot--"
"Nothing to worry about," Cable said quietly, standing up. He stood there, swaying on his feet and blinking down at Pete. "Only a possibility." That ghostly smile reappeared. "Maybe I should reassign Jonas to another station, to make sure. Then again, the timeline only gets more difficult to manage when you try to manipulate something like that, doesn't it?" He tottered over to the end table sitting beside the couch and picked something up off it, his hand closing around it almost protectively. "Killing someone is easy. Preventing a death, on the other hand--that takes creativity, doesn't it?"
Pete still saw what Cable was holding, despite his attempt to distract him, and scowled. "Do I even want to know?" he asked pointedly. Blue--what does blue stand for in Josephine's little pharmaceutical color-code?
"Probably not," Cable acknowledged, meeting his eyes with a sudden, alarming directness. "We do what we have to do, right?" The exhaustion was still there, but that driven, uncompromising glint was too, that steely light that had never, in all the years that Pete had known this man, meant anything BUT trouble.
It was a telltale sign of how close Nate was to the edge, if he was relying on whatever was in that hypospray for a 'boost'. Pete just hoped, for Nate's sake--and everyone else's, too--that they got this mess resolved before he hit rock bottom. Tended to be an awful lot of pieces to pick up when that happened--
Rehashing the same old territory once more wouldn't do much good, though. Pete didn't want him along on this mission, but he knew there was no way to stop him. The only thing he could do, now, was to be there to watch Cable's back. Minimize the risk--do all he could to make sure Nate survived this latest obsessive mood.
He'd done it before, after all.
"Right," Pete growled grudgingly as he rose. "Remind me why I ever bought into all this bloody fatalism of yours?"
"Because you're the open-minded sort?"
"Sod off."
***
Jean lowered herself to the ground, scanning for Joseph. She'd lost track of him while they'd been in the air, her holding back floodwaters telekinetically, him reinforcing the dam while the neighborhood below was evacuated. #Joseph? Can you hear me?#
I--can. Joseph's thoughts were so faint that Jean frowned, growing worried.
#Are you all right?#
Just--tired.
#Stay where you are, I'll come get you--# Jean focused on that faint sense of his presence, somewhere off to her left, and rose into the air, fighting the winds as she telekinetically propelled herself towards his location. The wind really wasn't as bad, though, she noticed with surprise. Was the storm dying down? It had been what, ten hours since the temporal wave? Hank thought it was going to get a lot worse--I hope this isn't just a lull.
#Well, that depends, Mom. On a lot of things.#
Jean yelped and nearly fell out of the air. Recovering her composure, she righted herself, staring in disbelief at the spectral shape hanging before her.
#Rachel? Rachel, what are you doing here?#
The ghostly image smiled, or tried to--it wasn't much of a smile. It was Rachel as she had been, in full Phoenix-costume. #You've got to go back to the mansion, Mom.#
#What--why?#
The image shivered, blurring. #I don't have time to explain!# Rachel snapped. #It doesn't have to be right this second--you can wind up what you're doing here, but you have to be back at the mansion by tomorrow morning.#
#Rachel, I don't understand--#
#You don't HAVE to understand, Mom! Just be there! What's SUPPOSED to happen is falling apart, and I can't get anyone else back there to help. I've totally lost control over the chain of events--# Rachel's image suddenly shattered, like glass. Jean flinched, instinctively throwing up a shield, but there was no impact, nothing at all.
Jean blinked. #Rachel?# she called tentatively. No answer. Not even a trace that she'd been there in the first place. This is not tremendously encouraging, Jean thought with a worried sigh, continuing on towards where she'd sensed Joseph. Vague warnings--why would Rachel have been so oblique? Unless she really wasn't sure herself what was going to happen--and that business about losing control over the 'chain of events'?
Jean didn't like the feeling of being a pawn on some great gameboard. Not even when one of the players was her daughter.
***
Gina's eyes flew open, and she shivered, overcome by a sudden, icy spasm of fear like nothing she'd ever felt before. She sat up, throwing aside the light blanket someone had covered her with and peering around the dark room. "Jubilee?" she asked, her voice shaking slightly.
Then she heard the explosion. The whole station seemed to shudder with it, and, before she really knew what she was doing, she jumped off the narrow bed and ran for the door. #Jubilee!# she 'shouted' as loudly as she could.
The door slid open and Jubilee came running in, nearly colliding with her. "Did you hear that?" she asked, too loudly, her eyes wide. "What's happening? Can you sense anything?"
Gina didn't bother answering. She grabbed Jubilee's arm, pulling her with her, out into the hall. Whatever was happening, her instincts were telling her that sitting in her room, waiting for--whatever, wasn't a particularly good idea. Out in the hall, the lights were flashing red, and Gina froze, dizzy for a second. She could feel the other people in the station. They were angry, surprised--afraid.
"Gina!" Jubilee was shaking her. "C'mon, snap out of it! What's happening?"
"Attacking--" Gina said dazedly, her mind full of images. Aircraft--how were they flying through the storm without crashing? The station shook with another explosion. "Someone's attacking--"
--the armory, someone's put a security look on the armory!
--fucking well bypass it, then!
--can't, it's--
--station cloak is down, we're wide open!
WHERE THE HELL IS THAT BASTARD AMBROSE?!
Kevin. That was Kevin, Gina realized dazedly, and tried to concentrate again. If only she'd had more than a couple weeks of training from Ms. Frost!
--got them pinned down--
Much easier than our Lord thought--
Didn't want to do this. Didn't have a choice--
"Gina! Jubilee!" There was a shout from down the hall, and a blur of motion. Tally came to a stop beside them, breathing heavily, flushed and so upset that Gina flinched away from her. "We gotta get out of here right now!" The words came out so fast they almost ran together.
"What's happening?" Jubilee asked urgently.
"Ambrose--he--" Tally took a deep, gulping breath. "It was him, he was sabotaging our systems, HE'S why we couldn't reestablish communications--he let down the shields and there's Dark Riders in the station--"
Ambrose. Gina remembered how uneasy the security officer had made her, and could have wept with frustration. Why hadn't she paid ATTENTION to her feelings? She should have learned to, after everything that had happened when she'd been with Andrew, working for Essex! But she'd ignored the feeling that something bad was going to happen, AGAIN, and now look at what had happened!
"One of your own guys stabbed you in the back?" Jubilee exclaimed loudly. "Well, that sucks--"
Gina swayed, another flood of images and sounds cascading over her. She was listening too hard, she knew, not shielding herself like Ms. Frost had been trying to teach her. But she had to figure out what was happening, so that she knew what was going on. Like Bishop had told her--if you were in trouble, you had to know the tactical situation if you were going to get yourself out of it.
--taken alive, remember--
--will have our heads, otherwise--
Alive. Taken alive. Who? She blinked rapidly, trying to focus.
--all this trouble for a bloody defector--
Defector.
Kevin? He used to be a Dark Rider, he said.
Gina didn't even realize she'd said it aloud until she saw Tally staring at her. "They want him, don't they?" Gina said, not thinking. Just reacting, letting the pieces come together, KNOWING that there was more to this than only that, that this was just one tiny piece of something much bigger--
Tally's mouth moved soundlessly for a moment, and the wave of terror and pain that came from her nearly bowled Gina over. She looked back wildly the direction she'd come, and Gina could feel her trying to decide between what she'd been told to do and what she WANTED to do--and not just feel it, but HEAR it, too--
Kevin--Angharad--they told me to leave, but I can't, I can't! Images were running through Tally's mind of Kevin and Angharad, of the two of them and her in countless memories, good and bad, happy and serious--
Parents, Gina realized. She knew Tally was an orphan--the other girl had dropped that piece of information earlier. But in every way that counted, Kevin and Angharad were her parents. You didn't have to read her mind, to see it.
And her parents were somewhere in the station fighting for their lives--or maybe even more than that.
Jubilee, for all that she wasn't a telepath, seemed to see the same thing in Tally's face. Her jaw set, and she squared her shoulders.
"Okay, c'mon," she said determinedly. "Let's go find him."
Tally blinked at them, still clearly torn. "But--but he told me that we should get out through the emergency accesses!"
"Yeah, so?" Jubilee said challengingly. "Considering your mutant power, you don't think real fast, do you?" Another explosion shook the station, and the lights went out entirely for a second. When they came back on, she looked totally unfazed. Gina almost envied her. "The three of us can do some damage, too. It's not like we've little kids who need to run because we can't protect ourselves, right?"
The decision was easy to make in the end, Gina thought. Ms. Frost would be furious, but this was something she'd learned before she came to the Academy. From Bishop--and Nathan.
You didn't back off. You didn't give up. Not when there was something important to fight for.
"Right," Gina said softly, remembering the bank in Alberta again. She'd hurt people with her powers before. Innocent people she hadn't ever meant to hurt--but this was different. These were Dark Riders, working for Apocalypse.
And she'd never had a family. Some part of her wasn't willing to stand by and watch someone else lose theirs.
"Right," she repeated. "Let's go."
***
Vandal studied the screens, satisfied by the way the attack was proceeding. A good thing the storm seems to be dying down, he thought grimly. Otherwise, Lord Apocalypse would have been very upset. The High Lord had charged him with acquiring every neccessary component for the machine, and if he failed to get his hands on the most important component of all--well, the consequences would be most unpleasant. Vandal allowed himself a small smile at the thought of the traitor's eventual fate. Use his power and throw him away like the trash he is. It was almost offensive, to think of what Kevin Parrish could have been, how high he might have risen in the ranks if he hadn't been foolish enough to break allegiance. He might have been a Horseman--
Of course, he would also have been competition, in that case, Vandal thought with a smirk. Perhaps it was better this way. It was only his sense of propriety that was stung, after all.
"Report," he commanded the Dark Rider manning the comnet.
"They're meeting heavy resistance," the man said in a neutral voice. "But they are penetrating into the inner core of the station, thanks to our agent inside."
Their agent. Vandal almost laughed. It hadn't even been neccessary to corrupt the man. Now THAT was efficiency. Exploit their weaknesses--make them serve YOUR interests. It was as good a plan as any.
"Proceed," he instructed casually. "Let me know when the traitor is in custody. I have our own defenses to see to." Their 'guests' would be arriving soon, and Vandal wanted to ensure they had a proper welcome.
***
Kevin swore, diving back around the corner as several different kinds of energy blasts bisected the corridor. Damn, damn, damn--I'm going to find that son of a bitch and kill him! A traitor. In his own ranks. It was enough to make him sick. The last time it had happened was with Jeff Dunworthy, and it hadn't been Jeff's fault that he'd been kidnapped and turned into a mindless assassin.
As far as he knew, Ambrose didn't have that excuse.
Concentrating, he composed his breathing and waited. True to form, the eager and stupid ones came hurtling around the corner--just in time to get blown into bloody pieces by the displacement wave he let rip a moment before they could bring their mutant powers to bear. Gore splattered the walls, and Kevin heard shouts from the Dark Riders who'd been smart enough to hang back.
Swearing, he ran down the hall, hearing frantic reports from his people over the headset he was wearing. Bad news, all of it. No bloody way was the station holding out, not with all the defenses inactive and the cloak itself down. He'd ordered the evac already, while they still all had a way out, before they ended up having to follow standard procedure, which he really wanted to avoid--blowing myself up was NOT on my list of things to do today!--but there were still too many things to do. They couldn't abandon the station to the Dark Riders intact.
"Angharad!" he snapped, not hearing the voice he wanted desperately to hear amid those flooding the internal comchannel. "Where are you, love?"
A moment's crackling of static, and then his lover's voice, clear and strong above the rest of the babble. "Computer room," she said, swiftly. "Wiping the core memory--" There was too much in the station's records that could be used by the enemy, and God help them all if Apocalypse got hold of their copy of the Record--
"Set the charges and get out," Kevin grated. "There're intruders on your level already--" He turned the corner--and screamed, his whole body convulsing as he fell, twitching, to the ground.
Electric pain screamed along every nerve, but he managed to raise his head, to focus on the figure standing over him, holding a gun in one hand. Ambrose-- A distorted growl wrenched free from deep in his throat.
"I'm sorry, Kev," Ambrose said in a voice full of real regret.
Like bloody hell you are, you motherless son-- He tried to claw his way back up, but his body wasn't obeying his commands.
"Kevin!" Angharad sounded frantic. She must have heard him scream. "Kev, what's happening?"
"I never wanted it to end up this way," Ambrose continued, looking almost sorrowful now, Kevin saw through the haze creeping across his vision. "I know how much it'll hurt Angharad and Tally--but you're just going back where you belong, Kevin. Only right."
Back.
To the Dark Riders?
No--NO! Kevin managed to push himself up on his elbows, struggling to focus his displacement power. Ambrose must have hit him with some sort of neural-disruptive blast--I'm not going back, I WON'T--I'd rather DIE!
"T-traitor," he forced out. If I can keep him talking, just for a minute, it might wear off enough-- Enough to let him turn Ambrose into a thin red paste on the ceiling, which he wanted to do so badly at the moment, he could TASTE it.
Ambrose made an adjustment to his weapon, and leveled it at Kevin again. "Don't worry," he said quietly. "It won't last long. Apocalypse doesn't need you as a Dark Rider, Kev, he just needs your power."
"And w-what do you get out of it?" Kevin spat. My power? What the fuck? Since when was the ability to create displacement waves a marketable commodity?
"A way out, Kevin. What I've wanted for years--not that any of you ever paid attention--" Ambrose swallowed, a look of helpless rage in his eyes. "You ask us to give up everything, to turn ourselves into soldiers for the cause--and what the hell do we get in return? Nothing. You and Dunworthy and the rest of the station chiefs--to you, we're just robots, machine that make the adjustments to the timestream, who aren't supposed to FEEL anything! You don't even--"
Kevin would never be entirely sure what happened next. One minute, Ambrose was about to pull the trigger on him again, and the next moment, his traitorous security officer was lying on the floor in front of him, not moving, not breathing. Blood pouring from his nose and ears, and quite unmistakably dead.
Standing above him was an Askani with short black hair, who, to judge by the look on her face, was in a royally bad mood. "Believe I did that, I can NOT," she snarled, reaching down to haul him to his feet. "Wasting time, I am!"
"Who the--hell are you?" Kevin gasped out, leaning against the wall for support. The Askani glared at him, and grabbed his arm again, hauling him along with her with a strength that was so at odds with her slender frame that he wondered if she was telekinetically enhancing it.
"No one you need know," she said imperiously, waving a hand as she pulled him down the hall. Behind him, he heard howls of pain, and glanced wildly back over his shoulder, just in time to see a couple of Dark Riders crumple to the ground screaming, having slammed into a barrier of emerald-green energy that was now blocking the hall. The Askani didn't even seem to notice. She was too busy cursing to herself in the battle language, and kept eyeing him like a slab of meat, sizing him up. "Loathe human nexus points, I do," she finally snapped in a louder voice. "Always getting into so much trouble!"
"Human--what?" Maybe it was the aftereffects of the stun blast, but he was having a hard time following this.
What the hell did Apocalypse want with him, that he rated being rescued by an Askani?
"Silence yourself!" she snarled at him, her artificial eye glowing fiercely. "Not the only one who needs rescue, you are--"
Speech center working right or not, he was about to demand an explanation.
The need to understand what was going on dropped several places on his
priority list, however, when the roof collapsed on top of them.
to be continued...
[FOOTER]