Dance of the Dreamscape
Legal Disclaimer- This is fanfic. The following characters don't belong to me, they belong to Marvel, thanks Stan. Don't sue me, I don't have money.
A/N-Yep. Kari Spiritwalker is back, and this is about a day after "The Assault". I told you there was more to her. And hey, if you review it, I'll love you forever.
Chapter 1
Kari Spiritwalker sat up screaming. Her bed was covered in sweat, her hair was matted around her face and she had to blink several times before the reality that she was in her darkened Seattle bedroom took hold of her senses. She blinked, then rubbed her eyes with her fingers, trying to get the sleep out.
The nightmare was way too real. Jesse Kilmartin, Shalimar Fox, Lexa Pierce and Brennan Mulwray, her friends, her allies, and her fellow mutants were hurt. Sanctuary, a place that she had found sanctuary when she had needed it lay in tattered ruins. Hell, even the Helix had been destroyed in her dreams. The nagging thought that it may not have been a simple nightmare began to nag at her as she got up and started for the shower. Something was very wrong.
The hot water didn't help. She was clean, but the nagging instinct played at her nerves. She reached for the cell phone and dialed the number she knew by heart, but hadn't dialed in months. It went directly to voicemail.
Thanks for calling, but I'm way too busy right now. Leave the usual and I'll get back to you...
Kari smiled at the sound of Jesse's voice. Even though she didn't see him as much as used to, he still had the sound that made her heart sing. She sat at her computer and logged in, something telling her that the answer lay in email.
As the message flashed, she knew something was horribly wrong. The message was one she hoped to never see, but as a safehouse leader, she was in the loop to get one. Sanctuary's main computers were gone, the message one of absolute mainframe failure and the networking of all safehouses going into a dump bin warning. Their network was offline. Permanently.
Kari gulped and read the mail, trying to quiet the nag that played along her spine. It was bad and she knew that she had to go do something about it. Now.
The Harley had been a gift from her father. She rode it quickly into the rising sun, her long black hair braided behind her head, leather jacket warming her from the morning chill. She was headed for the ferry, she was going to Vancouver and their safehouse, because instinct told her that they would be there.
Reaching the ferry, she parked the bike, found a seat and closed her eyes. From the outward appearance, she seemed to be sleeping, and she was in such a receptive state, she stepped into the dreamscape. She had gotten much better at this since her time at Sanctuary, she had spent time with Charles Xavier at his school and was now able to control a doorway into this state. She knew what to do, and even had an idea of who to ask.
Standing in front of her memory of a beautiful Zen garden, Kari waited for Emma DeLauro. She knew the mutant only from the descriptions that her friends gave her of when she was alive, and she knew the power that the mutant had once had when she had bridged a visitation for her friends. Emma appeared quickly and her face told her the story. The nightmare had been real.
"How bad is it?" she asked, reading the emotion in the spirit's reaction to her presence.
"Bad," Emma's eyes met hers, "You know how bad. They are hurting and they need help."
Kari nodded. She knew that. How to help them was a bigger question.
"But how," she asked, Emma's ghost giving her no reply.
Somehow she knew, it was time to wake up.
She opened her eyes to the skyline of Vancouver. The ferry was almost there.
The route to the Vancouver safehouse was not easy. Adam Kane had arranged the safehouses to look just like youth hostels. Not only did it make for an emergency home for traveling mutants, but also, made the houses a small fortune from the traveling youth across the country. Usually the safehouse managers were the motherly type, blind to the abilities of the houseguests. Kari fit the bill of the overworked hostel manager, but she knew the house managers like a subfamily, because she ran the backup network.
She turned onto the tree-lined highway and looked toward the mountain ranges. She had agreed to the blinders that all visitors to Sanctuary had to wear on their first visits, but she knew where it was the instant that Jesse had turned hers off. Too many summers on the reservation told her where the mountains were and her time with Uncle Logan had made her a pretty fair tracker.
She turned the bike onto the dirt path that she knew lead to the safehouse manager's cabin. The cabin was non-descrip, small, and covered in pine trees. It looked completely undisturbed, but her instincts were screaming again.
She parked, grabbed her pack and slowly headed into the cabin, knowing the hiding place of the key. The light played in the cabin as the afternoon sun had settled in the sky and Kari looked for any sign of life. The patterns of dust on the floor were key.
"Lexa, it's me, Kari," she said to the dark corner.
Light refracted back as the sun moved and Lexa Pierce was standing in front of her.
"Thank god," Lexa said, "Were you followed?"
"No, I don't think so," Kari replied, her eyes meeting hers, "How bad is it?"
"Somewhat bad," Lexa's reply was muffled as she started hunting for the trap door built into the floor, "But, come downstairs and see for yourself."
Pulling the trapdoor open, Lexa motioned for Kari to follow her. Kari followed, her aversion to small places running to the back of her mind, but her sense of urgency overwhelming her senses. The hallway was pitch black, but Lexa put a hand up, light generating from her fingers and enabling Kari to follow her. They turned a corner and were met with light, this time light from a work area.
Shalimar looked up and smiled. To see the young Native American woman there was a relief.
"Fancy meeting you here," she laughed, "So you were the visitor?"
"Yes, unless someone else knows where this place is, where are the guys?" Kari asked, swinging her pack down next to the work bench, "I brought some protein bars, a first aid kit and some water if you guys need it. What happened?"
"It's a very long story," Shalimar said, moving back toward the large computer bank behind her, "The short form is that Sanctuary is no more, we lost the Helix and we're stuck."
"Not stuck, just displaced," Kari smiled at Shalimar, "Got to look at the bright side. Where's Adam?"
"That story is for Jess, Kari," Shalimar said, looking into the bag Kari proffered, "You know the backup codes for here?"
"Yep," Kari said, as she started with the keyboards, "But isn't this Jess' domain?"
"We're letting him sleep," Brennan interrupted from his place at the door, "Nice to see you Kari, I got the power running, but it's blinking far too much for my taste."
"Let me at it then," Kari went for the main keyport/terminal that was next to the bank of computers, "This shouldn't take too long. Are you guys all okay?"
Shalimar sat back, the bench seat in the cave being one of the few places to sit. Brennan joined her, the look in her eyes told him not to say too much.
"Yeah, I think we are," Brennan commented, "How did you find out?"
"Two ways," Kari answered but didn't meet his gaze, "You know that Adam built in a large contingency network for the safehouses, right?"
"Jesse had mentioned that," Lexa said, settling in with Shalimar and Brennan, "You had an alert sent out?"
"Almost instantly," Kari replied, as the lights completely came on in the room, "There you go, now where's Jesse?"
