Talons
Ororo noticed the little changes in Xavier's posture. The way his eyes narrowed, the way his fingers clenched, the way his breathing slowed.
"Oh-ohh," she muttered. "He's had to go deeper."
"Deeper?" Peter asked.
Ororo nodded. "It looked like he was doing a surface read up until a few seconds ago. Now he's going deeper. You've never seen him do this, Peter. He doesn't like to do it. The after effects can be pretty brutal."
"For him or for that?" Kurt asked, pointing to the prisoner.
"For both."
Kotoko was still speaking, but he elicited no further response from their captive. Things seemed to be at a stalemate. Then, without warning, the prisoner began to shriek. Everyone in the booth, except Xavier, put their hands to their ears in shock. Kurt hastily shut off the intercom with his tail, cutting the volume by a good percentage. It was a horrible sound, painful to hear. Not the kind of personal pain from claws across a blackboard, but the empathic pain transmitted through screams of another's agony. Kotoko scuttled back as the captive struggled anew, still emitting the horrendous shrieks. Logan crouched, arms wide, claws ready. It hadn't broken free yet, but if it did….
The captive suddenly collapsed, as a marionette without strings. His shrieks died down to pathetic squeals, then stopped entirely. He shivered with the parts of his body not under restraint. A split second later, Xavier gasped and leaned forward, shaking and panting for breath.
"May God forgive me," he whispered in a shaking voice. "I snapped him."
"You had to kill him?" Rogue asked with shocked disbelief.
Xavier rested his head on his left hand and closed his eyes. "The prisoner was part of a cult of personality. Cults short-circuit your natural thought processes, disengaging the gears of critical thinking in your mind. His entire world hinged on his leader. In seeking the information we needed… I somehow re-engaged those gears and forced him to truly see the lies he lived under." He wiped his brow and sat up. "The process is called 'snapping'. Even under the best conditions… it is a horrible, wrenching process for the subject."
Down in the Danger Room, Logan sheathed his claws and straightened up. Kotoko tentatively moved closer to the fallen prisoner.
"Imagine learning that every single, irrefutable fact you grew up with is a lie," the professor went on. "Imagine your entire world shattering as you watch, with nothing left to hold onto, and you're helpless to stop it." He paused, and when he next spoke, his voice was on the edge of tears. "And I didn't even do it correctly. He may never recover."
Kotoko drew near the quivering talon that once belonged to the best of the King's Own, now reduced to a trembling, incoherent child. What could possibly have caused this?
Xavier's voice whispered in his mind, Kotoko, I'm so sorry. I pushed this one too hard. When he blocked me out, I tried to slip past his defenses. I did not take the correct paths. I fear I have injured him severely.
Teacher Xavier, there was no choice, Kotoko responded. He reached out and touched the ex-soldier's closest limb, a surprisingly tender motion. We are fighting for the lives of both of our peoples, now. This was regrettable... but unavoidable.
Logan shook his head, hands akimbo. "Hope you got something useful before he imploded," he called up to the booth. "'Cause we ain't gettin' another shot at the poor bastard."
"I am well aware of that fact, Logan!" Xavier snapped. "I do not need you to remind me!"
Ororo laid a hand on Xavier's shoulder. "Easy, Charles. We all know that Logan has the tact of a six year old child."
"Are you all right, professor?" Scott's voice queried from a monitor to the right.
Xavier glanced at the screen. Everyone watching from medlab had been so quiet that he'd forgotten they were even there. He took a deep breath, clenching and relaxing his fists.
"I'm better than our prisoner," he replied.
"I hate to sound callous, sir, but did he have any useful information?" Scott asked.
Yes, Taktak did have useful information. Xavier didn't think he could live with himself if this disaster hadn't yielded at least something.
"Taktak was a low-level soldier, not privy to the command structure, but he did know something of value," Xavier stated. "He and his compatriots came primarily on a 'sampling' mission, which was why they went after the children. However, they were also prepared for a rescue mission. Apparently one of their first scouting parties went missing nearly two years ago and hadn't been heard from since. They had been assumed lost, either a portal accident or casualties of war. However, the signals given off by the exo-suits the other night gave them hope that the missing squad was still alive."
"This is starting to look like someone 'stumbled across' the missing talon squad and scavenged their technology," Scott said. "I'd like to think they were dead beforehand, but they could have been ambushed and taken prisoner."
"How well armed would that first scouting party have been?" Ororo asked. "Would they have been armed to the proverbial teeth, or in a hardsuit like Kotoko's?"
"They would have had light armor like Kotoko," Xavier said. "It would not have been nearly as difficult to take them down as it was the three invaders yesterday. It seems to me an army platoon could take them out, but that assumes they could find them at all. Those standard scouting suits have no room for armor and weaponry because of all the countermeasures and sensors built into them."
Scott removed his oxygen mask.
"Just what do you think you're doing?" Hank demanded.
"I can't talk with this thing on," Scott replied.
"Talking or not, your oxygen absorption level is too low. You need the extra oxygen. Put it back on. Now."
"Scott, it's O.K., we can hear you fine when you talk," Bobby told him. "Even Kurt, right?"
Kurt quickly looked to Bobby, having caught his name, but not the rest of the words. Bobby's eyes pleaded, and just out of Scott's field of vision he gave a thumbs up sign. Apparently, he was supposed to say "yes" to whatever Bobby just said.
"Yes, it isn't a problem," Kurt answered, resolving to listen more closely next time.
Bobby turned back. "See? We can all hear you. Let Hank have his way, all right?"
Scott finally did so, making a show of his reluctance. Ororo leaned closer to Kurt, though she was still looking at the screen. She whispered out of the side of her mouth, just loud enough for Kurt to hear her.
"If you ever decide to act as macho and stupid as Cyclops, I will personally wring your neck."
Kurt looked back at her, slightly apologetic, and pointed to the tufts of white in his ears. "I'm sorry, but I cannot hear when you whisper. Could you repeat that?"
Ororo stifled a growl of frustration. If it was anyone else, she'd swear Kurt was doing this on purpose.
"Professor, how many times have the King's Own sent those 'sampling patrols' lately?" Scott asked. "Kotoko made it sound like they were picking up in frequency, if they're making some kind of beachhead."
"Taktak seemed to have the same impression," Xavier answered, "though he did not know what the other squads were doing. They could have been doing sample collecting at different points around the globe, looking for a suitable place to set up operations."
"Or they could already be in some kind of war with this 'third party' who attacked us the other night." Scott held up Kitty's report, which Xavier had left for his perusal. "According to Kitty, thanks to the upstate floods, the demand for construction vehicles is far outstripping supply. There's been six equipment heists in New York state over the past month. Two of those cases have been resolved, and another two look like the work of a known, professional ring, which leaves us with two mysteries. We know for a fact one of them is Isidro's, and the other one looks suspiciously familiar. In both cases the entire night shift went missing without a trace, and there were no tire or tread marks in the ground to show where the stuff may have been driven to before it hit the road. That means we have one definite 'robot heist' and one probable, and both of those were within the past week.
"This organization is desperate for heavy construction equipment. They're under such time constraints that they're willing to take the chance of discovery rather than wait a few weeks and buy it all from out of state. They're panicking. I want all of you to think: what could possibly scare an organization with this kind of firepower, intelligence capability, and sophisticated infrastructure into making rash moves?"
"Discovery?" Kurt asked. "Cockroaches flee from the light. Perhaps when that poor man fled to the supermarket, the FBI investigated the crime, and now they are being led to these fiends' doorsteps? Perhaps they need to make a new nest in which to hide themselves?"
"Or the King's Own have been homing in on their signals one too many times," Ororo said. "What if the talons attacked one of this group's bases and inadvertently freed that gunman?"
A dreadful thought came to Kurt's mind. He looked at everyone in the booth. "What if they're not homing in on just a signal? What… what if this group has made a wormhole with their teleporting wrong? What if they are coming through there instead?"
Kurt finally looked to the professor for confirmation or denial, praying that he was wrong. The very idea of an uncontrolled gateway so frightened Kurt that his hands started to go cold.
"I'm not sure, Kurt," Xavier confessed. "I will have to ask Kotoko about that."
He looked down to Kotoko for many seconds, silent. He scowled. As his body tensed further, Kurt felt his mouth go dry. He so hoped he was wrong….
Xavier shook his head, muttering, "I knew it; I shouldn't have blithely accepted their explanation. I should have listened to my instincts." He spun his chair around, addressing the crew in the observation booth. "From the theories Kotoko knows, the wormholes generated by a single suit are of two kinds. The first covers a large area, but has a duration of only a few seconds, a minute at most. The second is small, only a foot or two in diameter, but can last for days or weeks. Either one is insidiously dangerous, able to let in toxic atmospheres, hostile creatures, and energy surges, among other things. One actually was on record of spitting out fast-moving lava."
Xavier's voice sharpened. "However, these limitations are due to a hardsuit's power restraints. If enough power is pumped into the device, it could make a wormhole large enough for a tank division to roll through, and remain that way indefinitely. Has anyone besides myself taken note of how many blackouts we've had recently?"
To be continued….